


A Cure for the Weight of the World

by autoeuphoric (FreezingRayne)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Endgame, Epilogue, Existential Angst, Multi, Polyamory, Quadrant Confusion, Recovery, Time Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-06-08 02:44:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6835753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreezingRayne/pseuds/autoeuphoric
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ascending to godhood as an instant cure for trauma and interpersonal problems: 0/10 would not recommend. </p><p>Meanwhile, back in the Veil, the rules are changing.</p><p>(the new universe did not come with directions)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is really more of a series of vignettes than a totally self-contained story. I will be jumping between the characters in the new world and the characters left behind in the Veil, and eventually we'll meet in the middle. This is part what-if fic, part me trying to wrap my head around the ending, and part just wanting certain convos that never happened in canon. Also, more pairings to come. 
> 
> I'm posting the parts in smaller chunks on my tumblr first, but it'll eventually all end up here. So if you're one of the people who don't like reading my tiny ass font, here you go!

**Dave: Win The Game**

When the blocky outline of the house appears, your heart beats in complicated percussion. You’re all flapping in the disembodied anime breeze, and the house tugs at you like you’re magnetized, lights up the exhausted pathways of your brain. It doesn’t feel like anything else in the game has.

_This is it. This is really it._

Karkat tenses. You’re too far away to hear it, but you know his syncopated breaths pull a clicky rattle up from the pit of his stomach. The sharp ridge of his spine sticks up as his shoulders hunch forward. You know each other’s anxiety by heart. You’d seen it on the meteor when he hadn’t slept in days, when his fear had summoned the sludgy rivers of his Land from the dream bubbles. He’s barely looking at the door, like if he does it’ll be a Jack to the face. You wish you were close enough to grab his hand.

Okay, let’s be real right now. Close enough to dare yourself to grab his hand, cycle through a million reasons why you shouldn’t, and then feel like a shitty fucking friend and a worse…whatever the fuck the two of you are.

You shove your hands into your pockets.

But then the house flips, turns white, and a door appears outlined in blue. Karkat swears, long and filthy and familiar. Was that not supposed to happen? You are so not up on all the plans. And you kind of figured Vriska would have rolled up by now to brag and spew exposition like a smarmy volcano. 

At least Jade is on it. She’s holding a blue and white sphere and…holy _shit_. That’s it. The Earth. Cupped in your friend’s hands like a bouncy ball. The planet glows, shining against the solid stoplight green of her eyes, the thrashing billows of her hair, the architecture of her face. She looks ancient, untouchable. 

“Dave.”

Your mouth is a little dry. You blame the wind. “Yeah?”

“Will you help me? I need a little time to make this work.”

You got that to spare. After all the fraymotifs time is swelling inside you like a marshmallow in the microwave. “What do you need me to do?”

She smiles wide enough for a cheek to dimple, and for a second she’s Jade again. “Just hold tight.”

Her hand is hot and dry, and when your fingers lace you feel a weightlessness in your guts, your skin tingles, and then the time is _yanked_ out of you, like she’s stuck a bendy straw into you and is sucking up your power like a half-melted slushie. It’s invasive and bizarre and also kind of sexy.

When John reaches for the doorknob, energy crackles to his fingertips. No one is breathing. Not one fucking inhale. In the distance you think you hear music, but it’s probably just the wind. The door opens. 

You walk through to the new world-- 

The new world is fucking dark.

Not Furthest Ring dark–-that’s a hungry void full of hentai monsters and fractured universes. This dark is gentler, textured. You’re shaking and fizzy, a bottle of soda that’s rolled off the counter, so messed up that it actually takes you 38 whole seconds to realize that it’s dark because it’s _night_.

It’s night and it smells like wood chips. Sort of…damp and earthy and warm. Green, new. Moss squishes under your feet and the wind rustles leaves.

“Holy shit, look!” someone shouts. Maybe John. You don’t know where you’re supposed to be looking, but dark silhouettes of heads are tipping back, so you do it too. Then you captchalogue your shades because _holy shit_.

Stars. Millions of them spilled out all sugary bright in the soft blue-black sky. Back in Houston you’d seen the occasional gleam through the miasmic soup of light pollution, but nothing like this. You know dick about astronomy, but you’d bet that the constellations here aren’t anything like the ones back home. And they look closer than they should be, thick enough to dip a big round scoop of galaxy-flavored ice cream.

The sheer enormity of it all presses down on you. The wind flaps your cape around your ankles and you stumble on the uneven ground–-dirt, and like…earthworms and shit–-and right into Karkat.

“Watch it, bulge-nibbler,” he says, but strained and remote. His eyes glow reddish-gold, flicking down to your face for a nanosecond before fixing back on the sky. His fingers curl around your arms, claws prickling through your sleeves. You get how he feels-–like he needs something familiar to hang on to. You’re pressed close enough to feel the buzz in his chest when he says, “Is this it? Is this Earth?”

“Hell if I know, dude. Ask Rose. She’s the one who grew up in Buttfuck Nowhere Woods.”

It definitely isn’t your Earth. Your Earth is a tension headache of exhaust and baking asphalt, greasy food and that one rotting dumpster that no one ever empties. Sirens and car stereos and 100% humidity, that one deaf old dude a floor down who watches HBO at full volume.

“It smells so…” Karkat’s forehead wrinkles and his lips purse in irritated wonder. “ _Pure_.”

You laugh. “Certified pre-owned. Earth, the remix–--hot and fresh out the kitchen. Re-virginized for your convenience–.”

“Dave.” Rose’s voice drifts out of the shadows. “Do you absolutely have to ruin the moment?”

You don’t respond because that is honestly a pretty stupid question.

Your eyes are adjusting, and now you can see Dirk, stance wide, sword out, eyes on the sky. From somewhere to your right John’s delighted derp laugh flares up, spreading to Jane and then to Jade. Roxy is pointing at a tree. Kanaya is examining the bottoms of her shoes. Terezi has apparently already fucked off somewhere (no big surprise) and John’s dad is quoting something whispery and rhythmic–-maybe a poem. You wait for Rose to tell him not to ruin the moment, but she doesn’t. Must be the suit.

But the point is, you’re all giddy and babbling and exhausted, and then Harleydad--or, Jake–-clears his throat and says in that loony fake accent, “Right then! What now?”

Wind and crickets. 

\--

You thrash around in the woods for awhile before it gets real obvious you need a new strategy. Some of you are nocturnal and some of you glow in the dark, but no one knows where the fuck this is or what direction to try or where you’re even going. You are no longer stuck in an actively hostile simulated universe full of ghosts and god-modded NPCs, but you should still stick together.

John’s contribution is, “We’re somewhere that’s in summer. Or spring. Or possibly early fall!”

Jake discerns that you are not in the jungle.

Dirk pulls a leaf off a tree, sniffs it, and declares this a ‘temperate deciduous forest.’ Though how the fuck he knows that you’re not sure. If there’s anyone who’s seen fewer leaves in their life than you, it’s the guy who grew up literally in the middle of the ocean.

Jane prods at her phone. “Anyone know the wifi password for the new universe?”

Rose is still gazing at the sky, hood pushed back into a soft pile on her shoulders. She doesn’t glow like Kanaya used to, but there is still a radiance to her, as if what little light there is likes her better than anyone else. She says, “There doesn’t appear to be a north star.”

“There isn’t,” Jade and Calliope say at the same time. 

“Space,” Kanaya explains, even though nobody asked.

Roxy suggests that Jade use her cool-ass warp action to figure out what’s nearby, and Jade says that she doesn’t want to teleport in a place this heavily forested. She could end up phased through a tree.

“It probably wouldn’t kill me, but it would suck. And it would definitely kill the tree.”

“Limitless displays of omnipotence should probably be saved for a last resort,” Rose agrees. “Or at least for house parties.”

Dirk says, “Need a house for that.”

John’s (or Jane’s, you guess) dad watches from beneath his hat, fingers tapping his chin. He doesn’t venture an opinion, but he does stick close to Jane. It’s been awhile since you’ve seen an adult.

You end up just sleeping rough. The ground is warm and smells like grass, and there’s probably beetles and like, _voles_ , but you’ve slept in worse places. Including your apartment when the a.c. is busted.

You and Karkat leave room for Jesus, but another thing about nature? It’s chilly in the morning. Damp, too, grass all slimy with dew. You roll over and faceplant into something warm and rumbling and sweater-wrapped. Distantly you know you should be fighting the drag of sleep, but your body is so heavy, muscles caved in like a collapsing star. A wrung-out towel. A Strider-sponge. You could sleep for a decade. You’ve woken up to Karkat draped over you like a grey satiny sloth so many times that it’s easy just to slip back down, soothed by the peppery smell of him, the tiny growls on his exhales.

You smoosh your face against his throat, already half-asleep again, close enough to feel his pulse. Your bodies are crazy different–-you’ve done a pretty thorough strip search. Your skin, eyes, fingernails and hair. Teeth, nipples, and tentacle junk. His words come from somewhere deeper inside him than yours do, vocal cords designed for a harsher language. Fuck, you aren’t even the same genus. But your heart and pulse are in the same place, even if you call them different things, and the color of his impossible blood is the same as yours. You match. And that is some grade-A, organic farm-raised cheese if you’ve ever heard it.

“Awwwww.” John busts your sleepy bubble. “You guys look so snuggly.”

Dread scuddles through your guts like insects. The mockery is worse because you’ve been bracing for it, thickening to a hard knot inside you. You hold very still for a couple breaths, and then heave an exaggerated yawn and scrub a grimy hand over your eyes. It’s fucking bright. The Furthest Ring is dull and you can’t get a pizza delivered, but at least it doesn’t try to blind you as soon as you roll over. You cram your shades on. John is smirking like he’s caught you with your fingers in the cookie jar. If the cookie jar was Karkat Vantas’s drawers. You’re surprised he isn’t taking pics.

You flap your cape open. “Plenty of room in the snuggle pile if you want in on this, dude. Who am I to keep all the hot troll ass for myself.”

John wrinkles his nose. “Pass! But seriously, come on, we’re having a war council. Or, whatever you call a war council when there’s no war.”

John hustles off to go ruin someone else’s morning, toes only just brushing the forest floor. Considering his aspect he probably has even more trouble keeping himself on the ground than the rest of you. You listen to him crash through a bramble bush and keep rubbing at your eyes.

You had known John wouldn’t get it. You’d spent days on the meteor internalizing that, coming up with slick segues, chill ways of slipping it to your best bro–- _yo, you know that thing we used to rip on all the time? That’s my jam now_. You’d agonized over it until you were an aerosol can under pressure, all tension and busted nerves, and everyone was bored with your shit. You were bored with your shit.

 _Don’t be a bitch_ , you reprimand your psyche. John’s not doing anything but being himself. He didn’t ask you to unleash a huge load of feelings spunk on him right when he’d rolled up.

You jostle Karkat harder than is necessary. “Get up, dude. Bus is here. Don’t wanna be late for class.”

Karkat sleeps with the grumpiest little frown, the corners of his mouth naturally turning down. He grumbles and smacks at your hand. He’s got leaves in his hair and dirt ground into the side of his face, spit pooling in the corner of his mouth. He opens his eyes and the annoyance slides away like a stick of butter on an ice rink. His pupils shrink until they’re tiny needle-points of black.

“Dave.” A whisper, hoarse with terror.

“Dude, what’s the _maaaaah_!”

Karkat is not a big guy, but he’s a loaf. A solid loaf of hysteria and dense muscle, and a bodyslam is not sexy touching. At least not when you aren’t ready for it.

“Ooof!”

He gets you right in the solar plexus and you hit the deck. Which happens to be covered in roots and pebbles and other shit that looks great in nature calendars but is less cool when dug into your spinal cord. Karkat wrenches your cape out from under you and pulls it snug around you both. You get a faceful of wiry hair and an elbow in your ribs, and then there’s no sound but your breaths and five hundred abrasively cheerful birds somewhere above you.

“Bro.” You do gymnastics with your tongue to try get some of the hair off it. “I know you like the cape. You’re a cape addict. We’re gonna find you a new universe chapter of Cape’s Anonymous, but now’s not–.”

Karkat’s growl thrums up into a snarl. “Shut up! Jesus Christ, shut your dribbling face hole for one single glance nugget! The sun is out, you pan-throbbing imbecile! I am not going to be held responsible if you burn your fucking face off!”

You’re stunned quiet, because it’s actually been awhile since there’s been such a profound _Lost in Translation_ moment between the two of you. You start to laugh and that just jacks his pissiness up a notch.

“Skin lesions aren’t funny, bulgemunch!”

“It’s Earth, remember?” You roll your shoulder, trying to extricate your arm from where it’s pinned between your chests. “No death-laser sun. It’s cool. Literally. Well, not cool. But. Diurnal.”

The tension drains out of him in little reluctant stutters. Sometimes you think Karkat works himself up because anger is a comfort. Even if it hurts it’s a pain he recognizes. “But…you’re so pale. How are you so pale if your sun is this bright?” 

“Rude.” You maneuver under his sweater, until your fingers rest in the warm indents between his ribs. “Thanks for looking out for my delicate fairy princess skin, dude. Glad I got you on my side.” Okay, there’s like eighteen rocks digging into your ass and it’s starting to smell downright funky in here, but. You’re actually pretty comfortable. You could stay put and be alright.

\--

**Karkat: Freak The Fuck Out**

This is fine.

No, really. You can’t decide what part you like best. The seven hundred chittering featherbeasts seething in the trees above you, the air that tastes like pure allergies, or the burning ball of instant migraine punching you square between the oculars. No wonder Her Imperious Condescension thought this planet would be better off flooded. Not to cheer on genocide, but you are literally inhaling _spores_ right now.

But it’s fine. Freak the fuck out? Maybe past you. Karkat Vantas the young, Karkat Vantas the _unevolved_. Current you is cool and collected, current you fought a leprechaun and triumphed, current you has a matesprit–

Your gastric sack threatens communion with your protein shoot as the grass rustles and a rock takes a step toward you, a fucking _rock_ , what the fuck is wrong with this planet?

“Jegus motherfucking piss nuggets why is that thing moving?”

Dave gently disengages you from his cape, where you’ve sort of climbed halfway up his back. “Better watch out for that turtle, dude. It might lunge. It might be a ninja. You never know what machinations it’s got going around its slimy-ass mind.”

“What? That’s clearly–oh.” You see the tiny feet and wrinkled head. It’s some kind of shelled reptile. And it moves slower than Sollux would trying to navigate the word _machinations_.

“Why the fuck does it look like a rock?” you demand, because you aren’t going to think about Sollux right now. Or Aradia. Or anyone else who got left behind.

“Don’t know. Why do you look like a loud asshole with sawed-off horns and the breath of a corpse?” The corner of his mouth curls up. “We’re all as god made us, dude.”

You breathe right in his face and he pretends to choke. Your fingers lace with his and you keep moving, giving the turtle its space. “Breath doesn’t look like anything, chute-licker.” 

You’ve never been so exhausted. Not even at the height of your sleep-deprived game of cluckbeast with a pantheon of eldritch squids. This just seems _fake_. A sidequest before you get back to the main plot. A prolonged dip in a dream bubble to the Land of Bees and Prickly Bushes.

As you get closer to the rest of your friends, Dave releases your hand, adding another scuff to your chafed bulge. When it’s just the two of you, he’s normal, he’s Dave, but now it’s like that first sweep all over again, when you’d clashed and rebounded, jabbed each other where it hurt just by existing. When he would go whole days without talking, just lie on his alchemized sleeping platform like a puppet with cut strings. You know John has something to do with this new awkwardness; they’ve got history. Fine. You get that. But you’d thought things between you two were more solid. More unshakeable. 

The others have gathered in a jagged semicircle clear of trees, standing in a pool of sunlight (whhyyyyy) and waiting for you. At least the wind here is mildly pleasant, cool and persistent, the background ripple of the trees a dozen shades of green. Kanaya’s a jadeblood and a rainbow drinker, hatched to bathe in the lucent pools of glittering noonlight while her fangs gleam and maidens offer their necks. Or something. But you’re not cut out for this.

Well, at least you aren’t totally alone, at least there’s–

“Terezi.” They look at you. You weren’t trying to be loud, okay, your voice just carries. “Where the fuck is Terezi?” You would have expected her to be licking rocks, sniffing dirt, leering at the local fauna. You’ve been here all night and you have yet to hear her voice, her laugh rattling like a door on broken hinges.

“She's not here, I don’t think.” John’s eyebrows are thick diagonals of overblown concern. He keeps pushing up his windy cap where it slips down his forehead, and you want to grab the damn thing and throw it into the woods. Except it would probably just respawn, or fly back to him like the magic carpet in Troll Aladdin. “I don’t really think that anyone has seen her at all?”

The wind thrashes the high grass back and forth. The tall, scratchy ends brush the backs of your hands. “What, and you didn’t think that was worth mentioning?” You can feel it coalescing in your shout tunnel, bloody sparks of rage alchemizing with the throb in your pan and the phlegmy rasp of your breath, the permanent squint you’re developing from how fucking _bright_ it is here. “Maybe just a casual ‘oh, by the by Karkat, just for your information we’ve _misplaced the blind girl_.”

“Terezi isn’t really blind. She’s like, fake blind!” At the threatening rumble that starts in your chirp-box, John readjusts, “I mean, she is blind, but she sees just fine! Or, wait–urgghh, you know what I mean! She doesn’t need you to take care of her!”

“You do not want to go down this road with me, Egbert.” Like he knows Terezi. Like he’s spent more than an hour in her presence. “I’ve got no time to wrangle your pitch-pale vacillations.” Everyone is staring at you now, and even as half of your pan is desperately face-palming and screeching about character development, another part can’t remember the last time you’d had an audience this large and this captive. 

“What, are the rest of us just going to start disappearing one by one. Where’s Jade’s ecto-lusus who can’t seem to locate a pair of pants? Oh, I don’t know, Karkat, I was too busy running into trees and rubbing my bulge to the inane oozings of my own voice!”

“Karkat, you’re being a jerk, and also a little unfair. We were all busy last night–,” Jade attempts to pacify you, but you are Karkat Vantas, rage rocket, blistering heat trail of frustration and anti-climax and you are _unpacifiable_.

“Busy? You mean busy frollicking like a clutch of pan-rotted wrigglers fresh out of the caverns? This is your bullshit planet, this is your clusterfucked session, and here was me thinking that being ‘gods of the new world’ was going to involve something more than a nature tour!”

You stop to suck in breath. It’s over. It’s over and you won but your friends are still dead. Your lusus is gone, your hive is blasted space dust, and fuck you in every orifice with a rusty culling fork, but you had actually started to believe that overripe nonsense that you were meant for greatness, that the new world needed you. That you would be important. But no. This is just another hideous movement in the never ending orchestra of gotcha moments that is your shitstorm of a life.

You’re garbage, you’re the worst kind of festering trash. What the fuck were you doing, thinking that you’d grown, matured from the scared, selfish little nooksore that poisoned universe frogs and threw tantrums and hated everyone so hard just so he could take a few seconds pause from hating himself?

Terezi is gone and you didn’t even notice.

Distantly, you’re aware that everyone is still looking at you and you’re still talking (god you are so insufferable how have they all not abandoned you on a space rock somewhere?) but you aren’t even making sense anymore.

“Dude.” Dave’s voice fizzles up from below you and you want to bury yourself in it, snarl your claws in his cape and just breathe him in but everyone is watching and he would hate it so much-–and your rage is lifting you up, hollowing you out, and it hurts, it barely even tastes like anger anymore, it’s just–-you don’t even have a word for it.

“Dude, you uh. You might, uh–.”

“What the fuck?” you snap, rounding on Dave. Or. Attempting to round. You definitely angle your body toward the source of his voice. The world rocks around you, trees swinging in a slow, verdant arc. You’re looking down at a freezefrarme of shocked faces. Way down. Your gastric sack has finally met your lungs. 

You feet pedal the air. Your arms flap. You’re still rising, and it’s not just on all the hot air you’re blowing out of your chute. 

“Oh,” you say. You're flying. 

You freak the fuck out.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meanwhile,

**TEREZI: LOSE THE GAME**

Really? Hasn’t the joke gotten a little stale? That you are all just pieces on some giggling maniac’s chessboard? That any one of you can be predicted and controlled? That the universe is built of something beyond brutal randomness bisected by thin, membranous lines of causation?

Fine. Lose the game? You can do that. You’re a seer of mind. Descendant to a truth that no one else has filtered through their pan. But sure, you can spell it out.

3V3RY G4M3 1S 4 LOS1NG G4M3 DUNK4SS. SOM3 JUST L4ST LONG3R.

But enough fake deep fuckery! These bad decisions aren’t going to make themselves.

Getting away unnoticed is easier than you expect, and also, if you are honest, easier than you had hoped. Your decision is made–-you’re going-–but alongside is the softly held wish that they will call after you. Pull you back. But they’re all goofy with success, distracted by the endgame scenario playing out in front of them.

Eh. Cheat codes were never really your style. That is more Vriska’s game.

You take one last sniff of the meteor, the shapes blurring into one another. Especially bright is Egbert’s appleberry blue, and you grin into the shifting abyss, recalling when you had tried to trick him into skipping forward to his doom and demise. Or times, because you had definitely done it more than once. You could pinpoint the exact iterations, but that would fill your pan even fuller. And it is already very full.  
In retrospect (and you have so many specs recently and they are so retro) it had only really been funny the times he hadn’t died. Those other times, you get the feeling, were a little bit awful.

But bygones! It had not been anything personal. You had only done it to spite Vriska.  
A familiar thought. If you had bothered to trace back down the pathways of impulses, the branching decision trees, the constant conjunction of actions and reactions, you wonder how many would begin the same: I did it because of Vriska Serket.

Wind thrashes your hair and chills your damp cheeks, which it shouldn’t. Even at the speed the rocket pack is propelling you, here in the void there should be nothing. The rules are changing. You can smell it.

You are not sure if you are in love. You don’t know if she is capable of it, or if you are. For sure you have had some triumphantly decadent piles, shooshed each other with a fervor to put adult film stars to shame. And sweeps ago, when you’d been lying in your cocoon, tiny, trembling, newly blind, head razed to nothing but scarlet pain and misery and nightmares–then you had blazed so black for her you would have torn apart the world. It is almost enough to make you buy that hoofbeast shit that Karkat’s ancestor had preached–-love that transcends the quadrants.

What you feel for her is not love. It is inevitability. It is cataclysm. You laugh into the untimely wind.

You haven’t felt much like yourself recently. Not that _yourself_ is a reliable concept anymore. Or _recently_.

So many yous! So many of them jostling for space in your pan. If you don’t expand careful focus, to hold yourself tight to this moment, this reprise, you would find yourself cast adrift on a teal sea of dead Terezis and doomed Terezis, and Terezis who never got to exist.

You see other paths, streaked, humid reflections in glass. A you who never played the game, a you who never FLARPd, who never lost her sight, who never answered the first time her husktop shouted a cerulean _hey!!!!!!!!_ A you who reached Ascension Day and took her place in the courtblock, a you blinded on a battlefield, a you who consorted with an empress. Some are closer than others–-the girl who woke sticky and sick on the meteor, eyes whole and perfect, a highblood’s cold slurry in her guts and a pan rotted through with guilt-–that girl is so close you can taste the Faygo on her skin.

You pull yourself out before you go too deep. 

Somewhere out there the final battle is happening, which would be very impressive if you hadn’t already  
witnessed the end of the world and the birth of another. If you hadn’t already rewritten reality. It takes a good bucketful of Fucked Up or Spectacular to impress your sniffnodes recently.

You still exist, and you are still moving through the Furthest Ring, which means that Vriska and Rose had been right–-the destruction of the Green Sun has not destroyed this session, just confined it. Cut it off from the rest of Paradox Space and destroyed the power source of a certain shitty skull monster in the process. And for specific Plot Reasons you are not entirely clear on, Vriska’s release of the Juju means all of you are somehow prevented from being shunted into a doomed timeline while the alpha just goes forward like it always has, in never-ending loops.

It’s a good plan. A smart one! With the side effect of being absolutely insane.

Trollian chimes. _That_ certainly is a color you haven’t tasted in awhile.

AA: hello terezi

GC: 4R4D1A  
GC: HOW N1C3 TO H34R FROM YOU 4T TH3 3ND OF 3V3RYTH1NG  
GC: SORRY 1 H4V3 B33N SO 4WFUL 4T K33PING 1N TOUCH  
GC: 1T 1S H4RD TO R3M3MB3R WHO 1S SUPPOS3D TO B3 D34D NOW4D4YS  
GC: 4ND WHO 1S JUST DR1FT1NG 4ROUND B3ING A SPOOKY W3IRDO

AA: i am so glad you brought that up!

GC: BROUGHT WH4T UP?

AA: death  
AA: drifting  
AA: the end of everything

GC: TH1S 1S WHY 1 LOV3 T4LK1NG TO YOU M1SS R4SPB3RRY W1N3  
GC: 1 N3V3R KNOW WH1CH 4R4D1A 1 4M GO1NG TO G3T  
GC: GHOST  
GC: FROG  
GC: S1X THOUS4ND ROBOTS  
GC: OR H4RB1NG3R OF TH3 3ND T1M3S!

AA: i have a plan

GC: 1 HOP3 YOU 4ND YOUR PL4N 4R3 V3RY H4PPY TOG3TH3R!  
GC: 1’V3 GOT MY OWN PL4N

AA: i know  
AA: it’s a terrible plan  
AA: i suggest you rethink it

GC: 1 SUGG3ST YOU B1T3 M3  
GC: 1 KNOW WH4T 1M DO1NG

AA: so do i  
AA: you’re going back to vriska  
AA: which is fine, we need her.

GC: WHO 1S W3?  
GC: YOU 4ND SOLLUX?

AA: yes  
AA: and also no

GC: WH4T 1S TH4T I SM3LL 1N TH3 D1ST4NCE?  
GC: COULD 1T B3  
GC: MY R4P1DLY 3ROD1NG PAT13NC3 BURN1NG L1K3 4 COM3T THROUGH THE V31L?  
GC: HON3STLY 4R4D1A, 1T H4S B33N 4 LONG N1GHT  
GC: P3RH4PS THE LONG3ST N1GHT  
GC: PL34S3 G3T TO TH3 PO1NT

AA: it will be easier to tell you in person  
AA: it will be easier to tell everyone in person

GC: 4G41N 1 4SK  
GC: WHO 1S TH1S 3V3RYONE  
GC: 4S F4R 4S 1 KNOW VRISK4 4ND 1 4RE THE ONLY PL4YERS L3FT BESID3S YOU 4ND MR. 4PPLEBERRY BL4ST  
GC: 4R3 YOU T4LK1NG 4BOUT TH3 GHOSTS?

AA: yes  
AA: and also no

GC: 1 H4T3 TH1S

AA: i know.  
AA: i’ll see you soon

\-----

**Aradia: Be Spooky**

What’s that, smartass? Spooky? Is this amateur hour?

You have spent a good third of your life dead. You’ve have pillaged tombs and excavated ancient battlefields. You have communed with spirits, helped facilitate the destruction of your species and eventual collapse of your universe, transferred your consciousness into an army of robots, and traded spit with a very sweaty boy. Almost all your closest friends are ghosts. You are a direct descendent of the spookiest bitch in history; not even the highest ranking Admorilizer in the Empress’s fleet would dare speak the Demoness’s name aloud in the bloody light of morning. Your body burns hot, your heart beats fast. You were made for hard use and quick disposal. Rustbloods are lifestyle canon-fodder. 

You were, as troll Lana del Rey once said, born to die.

You are _always_ spooky. You don’t have to try. And you’ve got a plan, and that is pretty spooky too.

You spread your wings wide, drifting on the effervescent slide of necessity and possibility, spiralling across heaped mountains of potential and winding rivers of intent. Dream bubbles are easy if you know what’s what. And you do.

You think of Sollux. First you picture him as he once was–-sleepless, frenetic with anxiety, a hunch of wiry shoulders over a keyboard, hobbled with pain but lit with enthusiasm. How he is now-–steadier but sadder, diminished. A doom player who has foretold the end and outlived it. You imagine his smell, mind honey and nervous sweat, the way his voice goes as raw as an electrical burn when you’re inside him.

A structure looms from the undulating chaos of probability, purple-black against a poisonous sky. He must be feeling nostalgic if he’s dreamt up his hivestem. He’s waiting for you on the roof, face uplifted. When you touch down you catch him up and spin him around. He shouts, long legs flapping out like a fishing line. You are giddy, you are full and brilliant and life and death have never been better.  
“Shit, AA.” Sollux’s claw darts up to keep his glasses on his skinny chunk of nasal cartilage. “Where’d you get the sugar bombs and why aren’t you sharing?”

You laugh; you’ve never met a troll as straight edge as Sollux, mind honey notwithstanding.

“Better than that. I just watched the universe dissolve.”

His laugh is a whistling hiss. “Should have known that would get you going–-.”

You kiss him, sloppy, with too much tongue. He still moans like you’re tearing him to pieces, and when you bite he gasps. You consider putting the plan on hold so you can tear his clothes off. Technically you could wish each other naked here, but that isn’t nearly as fun. But no, you’re an adventurer, and the most important rule of adventuring after ‘always be prepared’ is ‘don’t let any goofy nerds distract you from the plan, no matter how tight their nooks are’. There will be plenty of time for smooching later.

You pull back, leaving Sollux kissed stupid, a little bit of yellowish drool pooling at the corner of his mouth. Heh. Gross.

“You really watched the end of the universe?” Sollux slumps backward and reality ripples in time for his desk chair to catch him with a wheezy squeak. The cluttered corners of his block shore up around you. It smells like coffee and old laundry. “Didn’t get anything like that here. Not even a ripple in the sopor.”

“Things are changing, though,” you say. “Have changed. I can feel it.” Prickles across your scalp, in the rhythm of your pusher.

“Hm.” He jabs bony elbows into his thighs, leaning forward in his chair. “So what now?”

“Now we wait for Terezi,” you say. You wish he had imagined his block a little cleaner. There isn’t anywhere for you to sit that is not covered in socks or pizza boxes. Oh well. You’ve sat on worse.

“TZ? She’s still in the game?”

“Yes.” You spread your skirt across your legs. “She stayed for Vriska.”

Sollux’s face dulls with disdain. If there had been a camera he would have looked at it. “I respect Terezi as a troll and fellow blind prophet, but damn if that girl doesn’t have the romantic taste of a garbage compactor on a hot day. Please don’t tell me your plan involves Serkat, AA. She will shit on it. She will take a big liquid dump all over the innards of your machinations.”

You smile at him navigating “machinations” with careful delicacy. “She sucks,” you agree. “It’s Terezi I need, anyway. She’s a seer of mind. She can see across multiple timelines.”

Sollux takes off his glasses to rub at the soft, scorched flesh where his eyes used to be. You are not sure if they actually itch or if it’s just a habit. “But you can do that.”

“I can visit timelines and create new ones, but I can’t see how they connect or interact. Time may be a construct, but it’s definitely a physical construct. Or as physical as any of us are nowadays.” You smile, because it’s good to be alive.

Sollux can’t see it; he still looks annoyed. “And all this is part of your badass play to get us out of the game?”

“Yep!”

“Not to try to throw a turn-tool into all your complicated schemes, because I know you love those--but why didn’t we just go with the rest of them?

It’s a practical question asked in a reasonable tone, but you can hear what’s underneath. He had left everything behind and followed you into the bubbles and you’ve been drifting for a very long time. He trusts you, but trust erodes.

You spring up from your throne of soggy cardboard with a little twitch of your wings, toes pushing off the carpet and over to Sollux. You slide to your knees and put your hands on his thighs. This close you can hear the little wheezy rasp in his breaths. His skin is cooler than yours, but everyone’s skin is cooler than yours.

“I,” you say, voice quivering in conspiratorial glee, “Have a plan. To save everyone.”

“Everyone? You mean me, you, Vriska, and TZ?”

“No.” You dig your fingers into his jeans. The material gives beneath your claws, one seam at a time. “Everyone. Everyone who matters.”

\----

**Caliborn: Get Memed On**

...You don’t actually know what that means. You may be an unsubtle caricature of a early 21st century internet ‘fuckboy’, but you actually aren’t one. You’re an alien. 

Anyway. All that stuff is stupid. Your name is Caliborn and you have just killed your denizen. It was great. You also put the juju in the box. That was--okay, that was alright. You just kind of opened the lid and put the thing in. But you did it with a maniacal grin. You like those. 

Your denizen had told you--before you brutally murdered him--that you would know the moment to act; you would feel it. You’re feeling it now. 

As the clock begins to toll you raise the crowbar over your head, and you smash it. The clock, not the crowbar. You smash and you crash and you mangle. Just generally get really destructive like you were never allowed to when your sister was around. Then you wait. And wait. And wait. 

Enough

Fucking

_Waiting_

You smash one more time just in case. Shards of glass flicker across the stone floor. Sometimes they seem to be reflecting things that aren’t there. 

Stalactites drip, wind whistles through holes in the cavern wall. Nothing happens.

“What the fuck?” you shout, half-hoping that smug douchewipe with the black text will answer you. 

Instead, the troll with the wings says, “Having trouble performing?” 

She’s been watching you since you started smashing the clock. She’s creepier than the clown. Cuter, too. But you’re not in the mood for bitches and their flirty condescension. 

“This fucking thing,” you say. “I think it broke.” 

The troll tips her head to the side. She’s wearing a red hood. Good choice. You like red. “You hit it seventeen times with a metal rod. Were you expecting it to do something else?” 

“I have no time for bullshit and riddles,” you tell her. “I’ve had enough of those things. I want power and rewards.” 

“You don’t get any.” 

You scowl. “Why not?” 

“Because you lost.” 

You want her to come closer. You want to smash her. “I did not. I killed my denizen. I wrecked the clock. That means I win.” 

The troll shakes her head. “Nope. Sorry. Rule-change.” 

“Are you…” You hesitate. “Are you here to be my guide?” That’s how this works, you’re pretty sure. Things go bad, and the game sends you a way to fix them. The black text told you. 

“I’m not going to help you, Caliborn,” the bitch says. “You’re going to help me.” 

“And _then_ I’ll win?” 

“No.” The troll girl’s smile is huge and red. “You are very much a loser. And you are going to stay that way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tfw your evil plan ain't work


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Strilondes.

tentacleTherapist [TT] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] at 23:16 

TT: Hey.  
TT: Hold on a sec. 

TT: I would apologize for the hour, but I can see the light in your window from my own insomniac’s roost.  
TT: I can, however, try back later if you are otherwise engaged.

TT: Not engaged.  
TT: Well, not with anything I can’t postpone.  
TT: What can I do for you?

TT: To start with you can promise we will not continue to speak to each other like we are standing over an unspiked bowl of punch at our very first co-ed mixer.  
TT: Our situation is far from the norm, granted, but I feel emboldened to treat it as maturely as we can.

TT: Check. Stuttering and blushing will be kept to a bare minimum.  
TT: Really though, our situation isn’t that abnormal.  
TT: Well. Not as abnormal as some.

TT: As opposed to Roxy and I, who both grew up viewing the other as an incomprehensible mother figure?

TT: For instance.  
TT: Or Jake being raised by a grandma who was actually his daughter, John’s and Jane’s dad technically turnin out to be their adoptive brother. Dave and I. Well.  
TT: All I’m sayin is, it’s a clusterfuck.  
TT: You need a chart to keep it all straight.

TT: I’ve drawn one up, if that’s of any interest.

TT: No thanks, I made my own.  
TT: I’m just sayin, you and I may be riding the smallest Freudian payload of us all.  
TT: I just knew your other self as a woman who wrote pretentious books about wizards and died fighting for Earth’s freedom  
TT: And you knew me as Dave’s fucknut brother obsessed with anime swords and puppet ass, but you probably never even spoke to me.

TT: I never spoke to you, no.

TT: Right.  
TT: So this is not nearly as awkward as it could be.

TT: Agreed.  
TT: And I promise not to indulge in Dave’s purposefully accidental tendency of ‘forgetting’ to use your name in a hilarious deluge of self-deprecating pathos 

TT: By that you mean there is absolutely no danger of you calling me daddy.

TT: None whatsoever.

TT: Thank fuckin god.  
TT: I know Roxy is all giddy at the thought of being a parent, even an ecto-parent, but…  
TT: That’s not a title I’m ready to inherit.  
TT: Speaking of names,  
TT: I like your chumhandle.

TT: Thank you.  
TT: It was the product of a precocious 13-year-old mind that thought itself far more clever than it actually was, though it does highlight two of my most pervasive interests.  
TT: I’m quite attached to it.  
TT: I like your handle too.

TT: Thanks.

TT: I admit I had to look up what was the refrance  
TT: I am not as familiar with the Socratic dialogues as I could be.  
TT: My consumption of Greek literature has veered considerably more toward the sapphic

TT: Fair.

TT: Fortunately, it seems most of the human internet has survived intact.  
TT: That will be all there is at the end: cockroaches, porn gifs, and overly-erudite wikepedia articles.  
TT: Let it be our legacy.

TT: I think it already is.

TT: Speaking of Timaeus and his tedious expounding on the nature of the universe, I’ve been considering the existential implications of our recent victory.  
TT: I wanted to solicit your opinion, because according to Dave you are ‘all hells of smart.’

TT: You don’t have to flatter me first.  
TT: Shoot.

TT: Not flattery in the least, I assure you.  
TT: Kanaya and I took the opportunity to go flying this morning.  
TT: Unlike our other resident Alternian, she is amenable to daytime activities, for which I’m grateful.  
TT: As romantic an idea as night-flights may seem, it really only takes one high-speed collision with a bat to rub off some of the allure.

TT: How’d it go?  
TT: The day flying, not the bat colliding.

TT: Wonderfully. There was hand-holding, giggling, showing of the world–shining, shimmering, splendid.  
TT: There may even have been some chasing of butterflies through a field of wildflowers.

TT: Fuckin swoon

TT: Oh, it was worthy of several separate swoons.  
TT: And it made me speculate on the nature of our universe and our assigned place in it.  
TT: As all good dates should.

TT: I wouldn’t know about the good dates.  
TT: All of the remotely date-like scenarios I’ve participated in have involved skeletons and awkwardness

TT: You’re young.  
TT: You still have time.

TT: Anything in particular in regards to the nature of the universe have you hitting me up?

TT: Well, to begin with the most obvious–Karkat and Kanaya. Can now both fly.  
TT: Vigorously.  
TT: According to Dave, Karkat has rarely deigned to let his precious knightly toes touch the ground since we arrived.

TT: They weren’t god tier in the game, right?

TT: No.  
TT: And all chance of them reaching it had been obliterated by the time we came into contact.  
TT: Their session had already been overrun by ours. Their quest beds were gone.

TT: So what you’re wondering is  
TT: How do

TT: That is my current query, yes.

TT: Right. I was wondering about that too.  
TT: Back before the game started I heard from a cryptic and fake-British source that god tiers have wings.  
TT: When we finally ascended and didn’t, I figured the universe had finally cut us a break  
TT: Like, look at these poor chumps in their leggings and hot-pants. Let’s at least leave off the silky bug wings.  
TT: But since then I’ve gathered that only troll god tiers have wings.

TT: That’s correct.  
TT: At least, according to my knowledge.  
TT: They have the ability to manifest and dismiss them at will, but they are necessary for flight.  
TT: Karkat and Kanaya do not appear to have these wings. They fly like humans.

TT: And by that logic you’re assuming there’s a difference between ‘god tier’ and ‘gods of the new world’.

TT: Yes. I assume ‘god tier’ is simply a play on ‘god-mod’, or any other numerous bits of jargon that refer to divinity as the ultimate level in power-ups.  
TT: But winning the game means actual godhood.  
TT: As far as I can tell, all players who complete the game are given the same reward, even underpowered players.  
TT: Don’t tell Kanaya I called her underpowered.

TT: Never would.  
TT: I’ve been thinking along similar lines, especially considering all the bullshit we’ve had to put up with since we got here.  
TT: I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel any different. Definitely not more enlightened.

TT: Mmm.  
TT: And the dozen of us are not exactly sitting on clouds, eating ambrosia.

TT: I feel like myself.  
TT: Like, a self that can fly, rip out souls, and grow back body parts and that’s god-like but not  
TT: You know. God-like.

TT: I have a few theories.

TT: Thought you might.

TT: The first is simple.  
TT: The game has always responded to its players, and none of us have any solid background in any religious tradition.  
TT: The game may just have adapted to our expectations.

TT: In my experience, the game likes to punk your ass  
TT: Subvert expectations.

TT: Which makes me more inclined toward my second theory  
TT: That in manufacturing our victory we violated a number of key conditions.  
TT: In laymen’s terms, we broke the game.  
TT: Our victory came from a merging of three sessions, two of which were scratched. We built our success largely from materials that should no longer have existed.  
TT: We had a large number of players who did not complete their quests, and two who did not reach god tier.  
TT: Two of our number were not even technically players. Calliope died before she could enter her session, and Jane’s father’s entry into the medium was dependent on her own.  
TT: We also elected to use a planet we brought from our old universe, rather than one the game created for us

TT: We still live on Earth, not some brand new planet made in our image, yeah.  
TT: Whatever the fuck that would look like.  
TT: And the carapacians treat us more like royalty than, say, divinity.

TT: Yes, there has been copious bowing, but alas, no worshipping.  
TT: It’s enough to make a teenage god feel unappreciated.

TT: It’s fuckin weird, is what it is.  
TT: Still not used to being called “Prince”.  
TT: Though I guess it’s good they’re so down to let us crash.  
TT: Without my workshop I don’t have much in the way of marketable skills.

TT: You could take a leaf out of your predecessor’s book and corner the market on fetish pornography.

TT: No fuckin way.  
TT: All the leaves are going in a pile. That pile is going to be burned. The books are staying on the shelf.  
TT: Would burn those too if it wouldn’t set a bad precedent for future generations.  
TT: I already act enough like him without even trying. I’m not picking up anymore of his creepy fuckin quirks.

TT: He had his moments.

TT: I thought you said you never met him.

TT: I’ve never had the dubious pleasure of his company, no.  
TT: But I’ve watched his videos.  
TT: It wasn’t all puppet humping.

TT: His videos.  
TT: So when I said that our relationship was the least weird in a vast ocean of things much greater and weirder–

TT: I may have been slightly less than honest when I agreed, yes.

timaeusTestified is an idle chum! 

TT: I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t have brought it up.  
TT: I’ve gotten used to spending my time with female trolls, who are all significantly less delicate than most humans are when it comes to matters such as these.  
TT: Well, at least these ones are. My sample size is not large.  
TT: I apologize if I made you uncomfortable.

TT: What?  
TT: Oh, fuck no.  
TT: I was just trying to figure out if there was any conceivable way to keep shit from getting awkward as hell when I ask if you happen to have any of those videos downloaded.

TT: I do, as a matter of fact, have quite a selection of pre-scratch porno.

TT: Let it be our legacy.

\---

**Dirk: Cope Poorly**

But that would suggest you were coping at all. 

You are in the tallest building on the highest floor, but it’s all wrong. When you push yourself away from your desk it doesn’t rattle and the wheels on your chair don’t squeak. They don’t catch in worn-down carpet. The air doesn’t thicken your breaths. You had known that apartment like you know your own body, its rooms extensions of your arms and legs. Wires, posters, cans stacked to the ceiling, everything chronically damp and depressingly mildewed.

This is marble counters and clean skylights, a fridge full of perishable food and a fucking _bathtub_. This is not being able to bring yourself to hang a single poster because you don’t want to mark up the perfectly painted walls. Too huge, too empty, even after you spread the contents of your sylladex across it.

“Strider-Prince?”

Christ.

A rattle and a light flickering on at the end of the hallway. “Are you here, sir?”

“It’s cool, Bishop.” Where else would you be? “Come in. I’m unarmed.”

The first time you had woken up to fumbling in your kitchen and a light you hadn’t left on, you had nearly impaled his little round head. You still aren’t great at sleeping, and you’re even worse at waking up in any mode besides CATASTROPHE. When you had found a little dude with a squeaky voice and checkered apron chopping vegetables you had relaxed somewhat.

Okay, you hadn’t relaxed at all. You had sat rigidly on the counter beside the sink and watched. If he had been offended that you’d supervised his soup-making with a katana in your hand, he hadn’t let on. Just babbled away about the weather and crop yields and the brand new sculpture garden being erected in the center of town. Small talk, harmless blather as he cut up carrots and onions and some grassy green herb that you don’t know the name for. Totally normal, like he does this everyday. You wonder what that’s like. To have an interaction that isn’t utterly exhausting. To talk to someone without strategizing beforehand.

When the natives had found you all in the woods the morning after you beat the game, they had known you. A bunch of nerds in muddy pajamas with sylladexes full of weapons and orange soda. You had been foretold. One of them, a tiny pawn in a filthy toga and a sash, had squeaked and babbled and clapped his little hands together. Dave had whooped and thrown himself across the clearing to greet him. Like an old friend. Like family.

The Mayor had introduced the carapacians settled nearby, in an aluminum city surrounded by farmland. Their main export is pumpkins, their electricity is wind and solar powered, and they have been waiting for all of you for a very long time. Generations.

“Strider-Prince,” Bishop says again. The soft overhead light glimmers on a shiny black carapace and lizard eyes. “Are you well this evening?”

And then there’s the fucking suffixes.

When you had asked Bishop to call you Dirk, his eyes went blank and fuzzy. Like he didn’t understand you. Like his programming didn’t allow for it. Except you aren’t in the game anymore, so nobody should be running on programming. Whatever the Condesce had done to get the carapacians to Earth, she had turned them into real boys to do it.

At least your title isn’t the worst. Maryam-Sylph is a mouthful and Crocker-Maid sounds like a brand of juice. John had been horrified to discover that carapacians all pronounce the h in ‘heir’. It only took about three hours for someone (Dave) to hack into his phone and change all his userpics to a buck-toothed rabbit.

…You honestly don’t see it. John may have big front teeth, but they aren’t on the side of him you’re usually focused on.

You probably shouldn’t be focused on _any_ part of your bro’s best friend. Although you have already made out with and exchanged very awkward handjobs with your bro’s best friend’s biological father. The fraternization barn door got left wide open and clusterfuck horse is on the loose.

Back when the anonymous grey text had first told you about the game, when you had discovered that one day you would meet your friends in person, you had immersed yourself in old Earth culture. Anything at all to give you an idea of how humans are supposed to interact with each other. Movies, teen dramas, psychological treatises, three thousand years of philosophical observations. You mainlined history, fallen down the deep, dark well of urban dictionary. Wandered through abandoned forums. The internet was still there, perfectly preserved like marble ruins in a vacuum.

What you feel for Roxy–exasperation, tenderness, the need to make sure she’s safe–those are family feelings, even though she isn’t related to you by blood. And with Jake–the burning need to tear his clothes off and get your mouth on every part of his body–that’s romantic. The friend feelings you have a little more trouble with. They’re like family feelings, but less intense? Except sometimes just as intense. More intense. Sort of like romance feelings but without the boning. Although some people do bone their friends. And you are attracted to John (the dude is like 98% shoulders and moe blue eyes) but you don’t feel the same vital need to be close to him that you feel for Jake. Felt for Jake.

And then there’s Dave, which…you thought fractals were complicated. You thought Wachowski films were complicated. But they are nothing compared to the tangled, stringy mess of what you feel for Dave. A delicious shame smoothie served with a plateful of euphoric disbelief, seasoned with guilty appreciation for the way he move when he strifes. The need to impress, the drive to protect. You want to grab him, shake him, prove that you are nothing like the man who hurt him. Except you are, and your first instinct is to force him to accept you.

You are trying to be better. You are trying to be less you.

 _Yeah. Okay_ , says a voice in your head that might as well be on your shades. You have had so many arguments with a splinter of yourself that the fact that it no longer exists doesn’t matter. It’s still shitting itself in digital delight at the schadenfreude of your situation. _That’s why you’re holed up in your tower. That’s why you’re asking your daughter for her porn stash. Because you are such a decent and healthy guy._

She’s not your daughter. Or, she is. But. Not in any way that actually matters and fucking shit, you have just been sitting here spacing out and Bishop looks about ready to start checking your power supply.

“Sorry. I’m good. Not hungry, though.”

Bishop is puzzled, all squinted eyes and angled brows. Carapacians’ expressions are less nuanced than humans’. It’s honestly a relief.

“Are you sure you are well, Strider-Prince?”

“I’m great. You can go.”

He leaves the light on, and you can’t quite bring yourself to dredge through your stolid angst to get up and turn it back off. You spin your chair back around and check your chumroll. So many more tags than there used to be, all of them grayed out except for tentacleTherapist. You sign off before you are tempted.

You like talking to Rose. Which is why you can’t keep doing it. Rose is dangerous. She makes you feel like the shitty parts of you aren’t actually that bad. It’s not her fault–her brain just enables yours, echoes the same solipsistic callowness you have edged around your whole life.

If you aren’t careful, you’ll lean on her until you convince yourself that there isn’t any point in trying to change. You’re fine. You’re better than fine. You’re fantastic.

Because sure, when all the carapacians bowed to you the first time, it had been weird and awkward and you really hoped they didn’t try to kiss your ring (you don’t have a ring) but a sickeningly familiar part of you just thought: _about fucking time_.

This is why you shouldn’t be Strider-Prince. This is why you should just stay up here.

Rose had been pretty on-point with her assessment of the current situation, and you hadn’t been lying when you had said you don’t feel any different. Winning the game, meeting your bro, resolving to try harder–none of that changes reality. You are still an unstable kid with fourteen swords, a history of controlling behavior, and the ability to rip out souls. And you are immortal. You aren’t going away.  
You can’t think of anything worse for the new universe than you.

\---

**Rose: See**

Dirk’s chumhandle darkens as he goes idle, but the window across the river stays lit, a single open eye in a sleeping city.

You capchalogue your phone, then press your palms down on either side of you, little flecks of the stonework digging in. Three stories below the river tumbles through the dark, invisible but for the tiny froth of white where currents meet and clash. Even knowing that you can’t fall and wouldn’t die even if you did, vertigo swoops through you as you watch your legs dangle over the edge of the balcony. Perhaps eventually your human instincts will fade, worn away by time and disuse. In books that is always how immortal beings lose their grip on reality and give themselves over to villainy and vice.  
You wonder how long it will take to happen to you. You wonder if you’ll notice when it does.

When you tip your head back you are assaulted by the opalescence of the cosmos, the gleaming sway of a billion young stars. You are not an astronomer, but you have educated yourself enough in the past weeks to confirm that these aren’t the stars you know. No sign of dippers, little or big, or any of the familiar constellations. You fear a thorough investigation would turn up the outlines of slime ghosts and broken records. This may be your pet universe, but you don’t know if you want the squiddle graphic from 13-year-old Rose’s favorite t-shirt to be emblazoned for eternity across the sky. 

Doubtless your old universe would have been strange for the Alternians. To see their caste sigils in the sky. Karkat had spent two hours fuming after you had described Earth astrology (how very like a Cancer) but it might have been good for him to look up and see the interlocking shackles of his sign, magnificent and timelessly distant.

“Is the view from the balcony more compelling at night, or are you simply not tired?”

Wreathed in soft light and dressed in a white and gold robe she had made herself, she looks more godlike than you ever will. Kanaya Maryam is the most beautiful person you have ever met and also, you think, the most dangerous. She craves blood, moves as fast as a cobra, and possesses an almost invulnerable body. A weapon of mass destruction that sleeps beside you every night.

“I have never been more exhausted in my life,” you tell her. Not entirely true, but those first few days in the game had been a sleepless crawl through numb, sucking mud, mind scraped bloody from the Horrorterror’s assault. But you have never been this tired with so little to distract you.

Kanaya wraps the hem of her skirt around her hand, joining you on the wall one slender leg at a time. She smells like flowers some days, and like blood on others. Right now she just smells like a troll–peppery and deep, like spiced tea.

“Is this a seer matter?” Kanaya asks. “Or simple human insomnia?”

“There’s nothing simple about insomnia, human or otherwise,” you say, needlessly. Kanaya has not slept well either, recently. Or in the last three years. Her nightmares are nowhere near as gruesome or as frequent as Karkat’s, but she will never be truly comfortable sleeping out in the open air. 

Jade and Roxy are trying, but so far the stinking goop that has come out of the alchemiter makes a highly efficient weed-killer, but not a sopor analogue. Just breathing in the fumes had made Jade vomit and Roxy let out a dazzlingly varied stream of profanity.

“It would be much easier if we had a starting point!” Jade had told you. “But we don’t even know what its basic components are! We have to do everything from scratch. All Karkat has told us is that sopor is ‘gloopy and glorious’. Apparently big old robots just delivered it their houses once a month.”

Kanaya asks, “Have you had any coherent contact with Dave? I have received a number of blurry photographs from Karkat. A code of some sort, maybe. Or he just sat on his palmhusk.”

“Dave isn’t online. He pestered me a few hours ago when they found the lab, followed by an unusual radio silence.”

“Perhaps he is getting reacquainted with his turntables,” Kanaya says. “Or he and Karkat are taking advantage of the privacy only an empty meteor can afford.”

Dave and Karkat had wanted to search for the meteor the moment the Mayor and his lady friend in the colorful coat had told them about it, but the rest of you had insisted you try and get settled before anyone did any hardcore exploring. Dave had settled right down onto your living room floor, and Karkat had taken the couch. Which struck you as utterly irrational, considering their behaviour over the last few years.

In the Veil you had only caught flashes of their courtship–the arguments that spilled out in the corridors, the strifes gone wrong, the caffeine-fueled late-night romps through the lab that ended in spilled coffee and dicks scribbled all over your grimoire. They spent a great deal of time together, but that time was very rarely where the rest of you could see.

Out loud you say, “I don’t pretend to understand the seething miasmic horror of Karkat Vantas’s psychological sinkholes. Or my brother’s.”

 _Brother_.

The word still catches in your teeth, crumbles strangely on your tongue. You’ve had years to internalize it, and yet.

The psychologist in you puts it down to the distinctly un-sisterly thoughts you had about Dave in the years before the game, and the seer attributes it to the distinctly un-sisterly things you did with him in doomed timelines. The part of you that is just Rose Lalonde tries not to think about it at all.

“I don’t think even he knows the depths of his own tortured psyche,” you say. “Although I’m sure any one of us would provide a therapist enough fodder for several dissertations, a bestselling book, and a dozen new entries into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. If it still existed.”

Kanaya’s smile shows a hint of fang. “We are a mess.”

You look at her–soft green lips, devastating cheekbones, slender fingers that lace with yours. Kanaya has witnessed the destruction of her race, her future, her legacy. She has watched her friends kill each other, borne up underneath the demands of a strange new body, and weathered your own brief but fantastic flirtation with alcoholism. She is a miracle. And somehow she still looks at you like you are the answer to every question she has ever asked.

“Some of us more than others,” you say.

You are not beautiful–which is fine. Beauty did not spend inside the game, and you do like your face. You had realized that in the hours you’d spent scrying into glass balls and pools of water back in your Land. But still, the first time you met Dave in person you had thought, _ah. That’s where my mother’s cheekbones ran off to._

Kanaya kicks a heel against the brick, a rhythmic scritch. “I am glad they are taking some time alone. Karkat was becoming even more emotionally volcanic than is normal or healthy.”

“There is an edge, and we have all certainly been on it.”

“And you? Insomnia notwithstanding. Are you alright?”

“I’m–.”

You capture the _fine_ before it can escape. You force yourself to think about the answer. It’s one of the promises you had made back on the meteor, when Kanaya had made it clear she was uninterested in a relationship with another emotionally constipated narcissist. You had promised to air your grievances rather than solve them on your own.

You reassess. “I’m…unsettled.”

Kanaya folds her hands to show she is listening.

“Obviously all of us are struggling with the pervading sense of anticlimax, which I don’t think in and of itself is a reason for concern. We did spend the last few sweeps virtually at war. This sudden U-turn into retirement would feel premature no matter what.”

Kanaya nods. “I agree. Our final battle was fought on so many fronts, and so many things were left undone. Your quest, for example. My own ascension to god tier. Although that problem seems to have worked itself out.”

You sigh. “So many things unsaid, so many levels ungained. However, I have been informed that humans do not have ‘arcs’, and therefore have nothing to complain about.”

That gets you another fangy smile.

“I don’t know if it’s because of my class, but the sense of displacement feels especially acute. It’s like…” You struggle to explain the unexplainable. “It’s like reaching the climax of a piece of music, climbing to the crescendo only to have it end before you get to hear the final note. You know it is incomplete, but you don’t know how to finish it yourself.”

Water careens below your feet and the stars press down on you. Your universe lives and breathes. Kanaya asks, “Do you think we did the wrong thing?”

You shake your head in an emphatic denial. “Not insofar as our goal was to get ourselves out alive and passably intact. Paradox Space wanted to use us to perpetuate its cycle of birth and destruction, and it would never have let us free. We had to do that ourselves.”

“Well, I for one am glad we escaped, even if certain key and doubtlessly stupid conditions were violated.” Her glow has softened somewhat, dropping along with her voice. “Even if everyone was not able to–.” Her voice breaks cleanly. Her breaths thicken.

You rest your head on her shoulder.

Across the river, Dirk’s light burns on. The wind swells and tosses your hair, thrashes your skirt. You smell a storm.

You think about your life, all of it outside your control, but none of it left to fate. Guided by the hands of gods, demons, your past and future self. Your friend who pushed a button in a phantom laboratory on a rock. The whole perpetual motion machine of existence, clicking away in well-ordered lines of clockwork. Or fractured webs of chaos, depending on who’s looking.

Doc Scratch had bragged to you that he was omniscient. He had seen every possible choice and outcome, but even he had never been a free agent. In fact, he was arguably more bound than the rest of you, locked in an endless round of necessity, forced to play the same cards again and again and again across all timelines and layers of reality.

“What are you seeing?” Kanaya asks, and you realize you have closed your eyes, your awareness slipping inward. “Is it bad?”

When you look back at her, everything is sheened in light, not just Kanaya. You take a moment to remember how language works. How foolish, you had always thought, that your aspect deals in images and impressions–words rendered almost useless–when words are the thing you are best at.

“Yes,” you say. “And also, no.” At Kanaya’s raised eyebrow, “Qualitative distinctions are practically meaningless in this case.”

You wait, and Kanaya waits with you. Clouds move, the stars dance. The storm gets closer.

“I see–.” You say it several times more to make sure you are actually getting the words out. “–Purple.”  
“You see purple,” Kanaya repeats.

“And black.” You hold your arms out to feel the wind through your spread fingers. Beside you, Kanaya goes predator-still.

“Rose.” She isn’t looking at you. She is looking at your left arm, which is stretched out over the river, and at what you figure is the reason you had felt compelled to spend hours sitting on this fucking wall.

You look down. Draped over your arm, tassels tossing in the wind, is a ragged black and purple scarf. You don’t recognize it, but Kanaya does.

“Well,” she says presently. “That does not belong here.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here have some more davekat

**Karkat: Be Vaguely Uncomfortable in this Familiar Setting**

In perigrees past you expounded at length on how brazenly overjoyed you would be to never see this rock pile again. Its scuffed metal floors, frigid corridors, mutilated monsters suspended in dubious liquids. The worst things to ever happen in your clusterfucked parody of a life had happened here, but as you and Dave land on the roof and pick your way down to the nutritionblock, your gastric sack settles and your shoulders unknot. The floor still creaks in all the same places, the drawer beside the sink sticks. The block smells like dish soap and burnt grubloaf.

Basically, it smells like home.

Dave pulls his head out of a cabinet, dust in his hair and a tin of coffee in his hand. “Hell fucking yes.”

You brew it in the Extra Large Mystery Contraption that steams and rattles like a malfunctioning engine, then dig out your usual mugs: the red and black one with the chipped handle for Dave, the tall blue one for you. Yours has a ring of scum around the bottom and has to be washed.

“Still bad,” Dave says after the first sip. After the second, “Still fucking heinous.”

Coffee has a design flaw, you’ve found, in that it is always bad. Even that fresh ground shit Rose’s carapacian maid brews. But you have had this argument with Dave more than once, so you just clink your cups together and drink your sludge. Dave isn’t wearing his shades, and the sight of his eyes makes your pusher speed with sappy and typical fervor. Back in the Veil he had gone whole days without even putting them on, but in recent weeks he has vanished again, blocked himself off behind layers of plastic and bullshit.

It’s only been a perigree, but moving through the familiar rooms you feel a thousand sweeps old, and everywhere you look are artifacts of a dead civilization. Rose’s books stacked on the table, Kanaya’s fabrics unrolled in shimmering rivers, the newest district of cantown half built and sagging in the corner.

In the rumpusblock, Dave flicks the button on a power strip. “Fuck yeah,” he breathes as the light comes on. He hunches on the stool and begins a methodical check of his equipment. You are so used to his mumbling you barely hear it, but the ticks and volume spikes are rhythmic enough that he is probably rapping.

You shuffle through the scattered pile of books beside the sofa, pretending you haven’t read them all a dozen times. You keep Dave in the corner of your oculars, absorbing the fresh surge of Fucking Weird that is seeing him dressed like this. In the game he wore suits in putrid colors and after he went god tier it was all capes, all the time. At first just to chafe your bulge (he had magic pajamas and you didn’t, et-fucking-cetera) and then because they were a comfortable habit.

His faded grey jeans and red t-shirt fit him like your clothes have never fit you, hugged tight to his lean legs and the curve of his back. Dave isn’t built like John or Jake–muscle doesn’t show in bulk, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

You frothed with rage the first time you saw him through your viewport, watched him in that creeper apartment he fucked around the first six sweeps of his life. Crimson shirt matching crimson words–advertising his mutation (or so you thought) as he continued to be cooler, stronger, more competent than you ever were. A much better knight. You had been pitch for him in a very different way than you were for John.

John was the distant villain, the far-off life-ruiner. With Dave, it has always been deeply personal.

Dave drops his headphones to decapchalogue his palmhusk. He throws up a human peace sign (tolls don’t have signs for peace–honestly it’s surprising you even have a word for it) and takes a picture. Your own palmhusk chirps and Dave’s selfie pops up with a caption.

dude here i took a picture stop checking me out  
im trying to concentrate here

You hold back your smirk, turn your phone around, and stick up your middle finger.

SHUT THE FUCK UP

Dave barely reacts when his phone vibrates. You deposit yourself on the couch, slumping down on your glutes so you can’t see him. The next pic is of his torso, one hand pulling up the hem of his t-shirt, body stretched out in a long line.

come over here

Another chirp, another photo, t-shirt pulled up further.

and make me

You snort and take a picture of the couch arm because you don’t feel like posing. IS THE SIGHT OF YOUR SKELETAL THORAX SUPPOSED TO INFLAME ME WITH DESIRE?

Pesterchum lights up in the corner of your screen. You tap over to that instead.

TG: dude what theres a character limit  
TG: control yourself

CG: I’ll STICK WITH “FUCK YOU” THEN.

The pipes grumble in the walls and the light shivers. Whatever powers this place wavers here just like it had in the Veil. You can almost pretend that the Mayor is on the other side of the room, picking the labels off cans, that Rose and Kanaya are in the lab. Vriska might be about to come through the transportalizer to shove her strutpod down her protein chute. Terezi would be…here. Around. Alive. Here creaky laugh echoing down the corridors.

It could be any time in the last few years. You wish it was. Fucking god you are longing for the pan-numbing days of the Void. Shit is bad.

Dave’s chair releases a symphonic screech, followed by his short yip, like a kicked barkbeast. You bounce up just in time to see the chair tip over backward, unable to bear up beneath his sexy pose. You shout, the chair hits the floor and _fuck_ this is probably neither heroic nor just but you really don’t want to have to scrub human pan matter off the walls.

But instead of Dave cracking his crazy fucking head open, he goes perfectly rigid and floats up toward the ceiling.

“Shit,” he says when he’s high enough that his feet are brushing the lightgrub. His eyes are a little wide and he keeps rubbing his palms over his jeans; possibly checking to make sure all his parts are still attached to each other.

“Are you fucking pan-rotted?” you shout. “Are you so divine and all-powerful that you _forgot gravity exists_?” Your gastric sack lurches and buzzing numbness races over your skin. Static, according to Jade. She has a theory–something to do with electromagnetic fields and why human god tiers don’t need wings to fly. Why you don’t need wings to fly. You, here, on this human planet that grew out of a human session, with your blood just like a human’s.

A couple sweeps ago this would have eviscerated you. Torn you open as quick and clean as a culling fork. Yet another affirmation of what a lousy fucking troll you are–the universe has not even deigned to grant you this one classic signifier of myth and power.

Now–well, you’d be a bullshitter if you said it didn’t ache. But it’s a low-grade injury. A hangclaw instead of a missing limb. Dave hadn’t been the only one to come up for air over the last few sweeps.

You resist the urge to fly. It’s hard, like ignoring a persistent itch on the bottom of your foot. You may be getting better at not just drifting off at every stray breeze, but you’ve got nowhere near Dave’s control. So you just stay on the couch and continue your tirade. Every troll has their strengths.

Dave keeps his coolkid face on until you make it to the high point of the rant–call him a bulgenibbling douchewidget (or something like that) and he doubles over in midair, laugh turned to chuckly wheezes.

“Dude, what?” He does a lazy backflip in midair. You are more of a grey, foul-mouthed pinwheel when you fly.

“I’m not going to repeat it.” You are honestly not sure you could. Now that most of your rants happen in real time rather than in chat you don’t have them helpfully archived. “Tough shit.”

You are talking to Dave’s ankles, but you refuse to give yourself a crick in your neck straining up at him. Which is why you aren’t prepared when he drifts over and drops, arms and legs curled in tight.

“What the ffffffuck!”

He bounces and the couch springs scream. He’s got to be using time fuckery, suspended in the air for long enough to shoot you a smug douche grin before he is on top of you.

“Strider, you chute-licking sack of–.”

Fingers in your hair, a mouth on your neck, your sniffnodes filled with a rush of familiar scent that makes you shiver all the way down to your atoms.

“Makouts now, bitching later.”

The intimate buzz of his voice, the mutant heat of a body even warmer than yours–you’ve missed it so much. You barely spent any time apart over the last perigree, but he wasn’t there, not really. He was hidden in a place you’d thought had been locked and boaded-up, the key flushed down the gaper. You kiss him so hard your noses knock together. The tiny yelp of surprise when you get clumsy and bite too hard sends a different kind of static through you. You lap apologetically at his bleeding lip.

The room spins, your skin burns. Your pusher throbs like your whole body has become a heartbeat.

Dave nibbles at your jaw; he knows how much you like biting even if his flat human fangs can’t break your skin, can barely leave an imprint. Another hard pulse of your pusher and you imagine driving your claws into the vulnerable flesh under hands, slicing through skin and rending bone. It is so acute it feels less like fantasy and more like sense-memory.

You freeze.

“Dude.” Dave’s in a push-up position above you (or he could be hovering–fucked if you know) hair stuck to his forehead in feathery tufts. The cut pulls at the corner of his mouth when talks. “I know I said no monologues, but I didn’t mean go, like, straight porn silent.”

You respond with a bubbling growl. Dave’s eyebrows do a cautious upward flick, and yeah, what the fuck? You have predatory instincts, sure, but you’re not a fucking highblood. You don’t have Makara meltdowns or Zahhak ragegasms.

“Everything cool?”

He tries to roll off you, but can’t. Because you have your hands on his waist and you aren’t letting go. You, or _something_ inside you that is wound tight and shivering and desperately _hungry_ , very much does not want him to leave.

“…What are we doing here exactly?” His voice is as bland as short-grain starch splinters, but without the shades there is no hiding the unease. “If we’re playing ‘hapless twink gets ravished by the big bad alien’, you gotta let me know in advance so I can get into character. Also my safe word is Beyonce, if you were wondering–.”

You’re close enough that when you crack up you spit in his face. “What the fuck is a beyonce?”

“Dude–.” Dave recoils, and you let go fast enough to avoid gutting him, but not to save his shirt. It tears in a single long _riiiippppp_ , a casualty of war. Or a casualty of whatever bullshit your freakshow biology is trying to pull. “Karkat, my sad, uneducated bro-friend. If you have to even ask that question I have totally failed in my cross-cultural exchange. Also fuck you. I like this shirt.”

“Alchemize another one, shit-for-pans.”

“Won’t be the same, man. This one was like the perfect softness, and do you even know how hard it is to alchemize blood orange?”

“Dave, this shirt is fucking red. Like all your goddamn clothes.”

He grins down at you, and your insides twist with a hideous combination of pity, hate, and relief. He hasn’t made an expression that open since the game ended. Whatever strange, angry tension had been building in you has been successfully vented by Dave’s blithering nonsense. Your wriggly, however, is still a pressing issue. As in, pressing against Dave’s thigh.

You tear his shirt the rest of the way off amid protests, tossing it backward over your head. Probably doesn’t go far. In fact may be stuck on one your horns.

“Yeah, fuck yeah. Spit on me and destroy my wardrobe, Karkat. Make my wardrobe your bitch.” Dave whispers it against your collarbone. Your fingers tighten in his hair, his wiry weight presses down on you. You want to freeze this moment and keep it forever, archived like one of your trollian rants.

And if the little smears from his bloody lip burn like drops of wax against your throat, well, you’ll fucking deal with that later.

\---

**Dave: Make It Weird**

The bathroom faucet still works–which, good news, because you’re seriously in need of some rinse and spit. On a scale of toilet cleaner to ambrosia, troll jizz rolls in at a solid spoiled milk. Taste’s like shit but probably won’t kill you. Or hasn’t so far. 

You scrub at your chin with a shriveled sliver of soap; all you needed was one of Rose’s smirks and bouncing eyebrows to ensure you always check for stains. You turn off the faucet and watch the water spin away with a _glugg_ as thick as a glottal stop. 

You’ve left the lights off in your block. Your eyes have always been sensitive–a quirk of your ecto-biology, or maybe just a lifetime in sunglasses. The twilight of the meteor is honestly kind of a relief. Rose and Kanaya keep their house obnoxious bright–huge windows, white walls, glittering pieces of glass hung in doorways to catch and shatter the light into prismatic rainbows. Not exactly the Lalonde aesthetic. 

_“Shouldn’t you be living in a grimy mansion with ravens and rotating bookshelves and those bushes shaped like animals? That seems more on-brand.”_

_“You could always move out. Surely the locals would provide you with your very own residence, separate and far away from mine. For you and anyone else you wanted to bring along.”_

She’d tossed you a treacly smile and you’d returned a middle finger, with interest. You are done with pretending that Rose isn’t the person who knows you best, but fuck it if sometimes you wish it wasn’t true. 

Your phone vibrates on your way out of the bathroom. You ignore it. Karkat can hold his goddamn hoofbeasts, you need a minute. And a new shirt. 

Your room is a vacuum-sealed time capsule of Modern Meteor Youth. Sheets kicked down to the foot of the bed, a graveyard of empty coffee cups, half a dozen janky cameras you made back when your alchemiter skills were a little less than epic. One of them will only photograph blue things, one inverts the colors, and one is totally normal except everyone pictured is wearing a tiny tiara. Your working camera is captchalogued, but you haven’t used it since the game ended. You’ve gone out a couple times, wandered down the river to the edges of town, but you just can’t get hyped over photographing trees and shit. And taking ironic self portraits is a lot less funny than it used to be. 

Years ago you messed with the idea of one day photographing them. Your friends. John and his stupid disguises, Rose and her wizard mansion, Jade and her creepy-ass plushies. Now it would probably just be weird. You would make it weird. 

Your phone vibrates again and you dig it out of your pocket and toss it onto your mattress. You toss yourself after it. Fuck if you even need to check the log to know what he’s bleating on about; dude has absolutely no chill. WHY AREN’T YOU ANSWERING, DICKNIBBLER? IF YOU NEED TIME TO FONDLE YOUR PRECIOUS HUMAN EMOTION SACK YOU COULD JUST SAY SO or something like that.

Still, you prefer this Karkat to the one he was three years ago. And the Dave you were. Fissured through with hairline cracks, creeping from shadow to crumbling shadow, emerging every so often to slough pieces off each other. When Rose had told you it would take three years to make it to the new session, no part of you actually believed you would survive the trip. Not just because of the Jacks on your ass or the cabal of murderous psychopaths you interacted with daily, or the buffet line of dream bubbles assaulting you every time you closed your eyes. Being conscious was like dragging yourself over shards of glass; even if you made it to the other side you would be too mangled to recognize. And then there was Karkat, an irritating echo of your own self-loathing, a reminder that you were still around, that your mind and muscles still worked. 

Once, after an argument about nothing that devolved, as they always did, into below-the-bulge insults and Karkat marching away in a bitchy funk, Rose had glanced up from her book and said, “Our very own shield and spear.” 

“Is this a dick joke?” you’d tried. You weren’t really in the mood. “Because his spear is going nowhere near my shield. If he even fucking has one.”

“The shield and spear. It’s a paradox. What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?” 

A gay crises, apparently. 

_Immovable objects_ makes you remember when you tried to teach a couple of the trolls to flash-step, and Karkat was so bad at it he actually seemed to be going backwards. Vriska had gotten it almost immediately, the asshole, and Terezi–Your stomach twists, hot and acidy. You cannot think about Terezi right now. You will honestly collapse. Like a twix bar snapped half-wise instead of length-wise. Just bleeding caramel and nougat all over the floor. 

Another message. You mumble, “fuckingshittitsbitch,” and worm across the mattress, fingertips catching on the screen. You’re expecting a wall of grey text, but you just get one sulky HEY, another WHAT ARE YOU DOING and third and latest, DAVE, ARE YOU ALRIGHT? 

You do a quick internal check and…shit. You have been up here for 32 minutes and 17 seconds. A little long to just be rubbing jizz out of your stubble (you don’t have stubble). You don’t lose track of time–even before the game you’d never needed clocks to know when to be where–but time is more elastic for you than it is for everyone else, more ambient. An integral part of experience, like breathing or having arms. Easier to just let it roll over you. 

You tap the screen, lighting up the textbox, watching the cursor blink. You imagine Karkat sitting on the couch, staring at his palmhusk. He sinks his claws into his wrists and forearms when he’s nervous, kneading silvery crescents into his skin.

TG: yeah hey im here  
TG: everythings fine just got distracted by the goldmine of truly remarkable shit i got amassed in here  
TG: a goddamn treasure trove for future archaeologists  
TG: ‘what have we got here jenkins’  
TG: ‘idk bosworth but it appears to be some sort of mr. t fetus suspended in liquid’

CG: OH MY GOD. COULD YOU JUST  
CG: SHUT UP FOR A MINUTE. JUST SHUT THE LID ON YOUR SQUAWK CHAMBER  
CG: AND YES, I AM AWARE THAT YOU ARE NOT USING ACTUAL WORDS TO COMMUNICATE WITH ME OVER CHAT.  
CG: I CAN LIGHT THE MATCH ON THAT ‘SICK BURN’ ALL ON MY OWN.CG: THAT ISN’T THE POINT. 

TG: oh is there gonna be a point

CG: FUCK YOU. I WANT TO TALK. 

TG: im shocked

CG: FUCK YOU ALL OVER AGAIN. I HAVE HAD IT UP TO MY NOOK WITH COOLKID BULLSHIT. IF MY AUDITORY SPONGECLOTS HAVE TO SUFFER THROUGH ONE MORE MIXED METAPHOR I WILL CULL MYSELF WITH THE MAYOR’S COLLECTION OF ALCHEMIZED SPORKS.  
CG: KANAYA TOLD ME THAT I SHOULDN’T PUSH. WE ALL JUST NEED A LITTLE MORE TIME TO WORK OUR SHIT OUT.  
CG: BUT I HAVE NEVER MET SHIT LESS WORKED OUT THAN OUR SHIT. OUR SHIT HAS NEVER WORKED OUT A DAY IN ITS LIFE.  
CG: OUR SHIT IS JUST SITTING ON THE COUCH WITH ONE HAND IN A BAG OF GRUBCRISPS AND THE OTHER ON ITS BULGE

TG: this is asinine why are we messaging each other why dont you just come up here  
TG: i know wifi is like natural law here but come on

CG: ARE YOU ASHAMED OF ME

TG: what

CG: IF YOU ARE, WELL. NO FUCKING SURPRISE THERE.  
CG: I AM PRETTY GODDAMN EMBARRASSING  
CG: EXHIBIT A: THIS CONVERSATION  
CG: I KNOW YOUR CULTURE SHITS ALL OVER RELATIONSHIPS LIKE OURS  
CG: AND I GET THAT WE’RE ON EARTH NOW, AND THERE’S EGBERT

TG: sidebar hold up  
TG: what the fuck does john have to do with  
TG: yeah alright im not even going to pretend i dont know the answer to that  
TG look the john thing is a process im dealing with it

CG: OH IS THAT WHAT YOU’RE DOING?  
CG BECAUSE TO ME IT LOOKS MORE LIKE MOPING AROUND YOUR SISTER’S HIVE, SITTING ON YOUR GLUTES, AND WRITING BAD RAPS  
CG: NOT JUST BAD IN A FAKE WAY THAT I INSIST ON TO PISS YOU OFF. I MEAN ACTUALLY BAD. 

TG: dude 

CG: WHEN WE’RE IN PUBLIC YOU TREAT ME LIKE A BARKBEAST WITH A BAD CASE OF FLATULENCE  
CG: AND I KNOW WHAT THIS BIG “””ROMANTIC METEOR TRIP””” IS ACTUALLY ABOUT

TG: oh yeah okay  
TG: whats it about karkat 

CG: YOU JUST WANTED A CHANCE TO PAIL ME WHERE NO ONE CAN SEE IT HAPPENING

TG: oh holy shit dude youre right  
TG: i didnt know im sorry  
TG: have i kinkshamed you by shutting the fucking door whenever we bone down

CG: OH PLEASE, DON’T BE OBTUSE.  
CG: YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. 

TG: your kink is okay bro

CG: ALKDFHLASDLFLKJDLSDDKLLDDDDDDDDDD

TG: shit chill dont knock yourself out on your own keyboard jesus  
TG: fuck okay look  
TG: give me a second  
TG: you are one of the literal actual straight up real as kraft grubsauce  
TG: good things that have happened to me in a deeply shitsucky existence  
TG: that is a short list bro  
TG: and just the fact that i can type that without someone holding a gun to my balls is evidence of some whedon-level character growth  
TG: buffy whedon not avengers whedon  
TG: not even john likes that garbage 

CG: I GET THIS REFERENCE.  
CG: I AM SLIGHTLY DISGUSTED WITH MYSELF. 

TG: like i said character growth  
TG: anyway im not saying i want to mack on you in front of like john’s dad or a bunch of chess people or anything but  
TG: im not ashamed of you  
TG: or if i am its in this bullshit assbackwards psychobabbly way that actually equals me being ashamed of myself

CG: FOR WHAT?

TG: for being ashamed of myself

CG: YOU’RE ASHAMED OF BEING ASHAMED OF YOURSELF.

TG: its moronic stay with me  
TG: not ashamed  
TG: so much as like  
TG: frustrated that i am not as okay as i thought i was  
TG: or as i decided i was going to pretend to be  
TG: or something idk im a little burnt out on feelings  
TG: my feelings engine is a little low and its a guzzler 

CG: FIRST OF ALL, THAT’S DISGUSTING  
CG: SECONDLY, UNLESS MY REASONING FACULTIES HAVE MELTED DOWN BENEATH THE SHEER BLISTERING RADIANCE OF YOUR PLANET’S OVERACTIVE SUN, YOU WERE THE ONE INSISTING WE HAD TO ‘RAP ABOUT STUFF’ SO IT DOESN’T ‘BUILD UP’ INTO EXPLOSIVE ‘EMOTIONAL DIARRHEA’

TG: right yeah im pretty sure i said something like that more than once  
TG: but listen i was so ready to tell john and jade and everyone else and not give a fuck what they thought  
TG: because it doesnt matter right  
TG: if i figure my shit out it doesnt matter what anyone else thinks right it shouldnt get to me  
TG: but then john wasnt even a jerk about it  
TG: he was just  
TG: nothing  
TG: like at first he thought i was fucking with him and then he worried he turned me gay with his deus ex machinations and then it was just like none of it ever happened  
TG: and yes i know more important shit was going down and i really did just puke my issue guts all over him when he rolled up  
TG: and john is pretty avoidant and emotionally tone deaf to begin with  
TG: like its not even a douche defense mechanism the dude just generally does not have a subtle bone in his body  
TG: so i know it was just a misfire and i should try again but i just fee  
lTG: really bad about it  
TG: and i know i shouldnt because as previously documented i dont need his support or approval or goddamn blessing in order to be okay with myself  
TG: or i guess i thought i didnt  
TG: so anyway  
TG: if you can cut a slice of substance out of that amorphous anxiety cake  
TG: thats where im at

You drop your phone to the bedspread. It bounces twice and slides into the little canyon beside your knees. You have been scrunched into the same position for eighteen minutes and sweat burns on the back of your neck and in your armpits. The phone screen is smudged by your traitor thumbs that can’t keep a lid on your shit. You unbend and one of your knees cracks. 

Distantly, you know you are shaking. Nothing major–just little tremors in your fingers. You could still pour a cup of coffee or scratch a record, stick your sword through flesh, slick and clean. 

Shit, look at you. You are panicking over this. And you are panicking because you’re panicking. 

CG: DAVE, YOU SHOULDN’T FEEL BAD ABOUT NOT FEELING BETTERCG: GOD KNOWS I FEEL WEIRD AROUND EGBERT. AND HARLEY. AND ALL YOUR ECTO-LUSII.  
CG: ESPECIALLY ENGLISH.  
CG: I CAN’T TELL IF HE IS MOCKING ME OR IF HIS BRAIN IS GENUINELY MADE OF SLOWLY SUBLIMATING GRUBLOAF

TG: he has a good ass i guess  
TG: we havent really talked enough for me to get past the basics

CG: YEAH.  
CG: I DON’T THINK IT’S WEIRD THAT YOU FEEL WEIRD. BUT YOU SHOULD PROBABLY…  
CG: FUCK.  
CG: I AM GARBAGE AT AUSPITIZING. YOU KNOW THE GLORIOUS, LIQUIDY SHIT I TOOK OVER ALL OF MY FRIENDSHIPS. I DON’T HAVE A RIGHT TO TELL YOU WHAT TO DO WITH YOURS.  
CG: BUT I THINK YOU SHOULD TALK TO JOHN BEFORE IT GETS WORSE.

TG: yeah but thats not all thats going on  
TG: the john thing is part of it but its more than that honestly

CG: YEAH, BUT THE REST OF IT IS JUST FREE-FLOATING ANXIETY.  
CG: THE JOHN THING YOU CAN ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING ABOUT

TG: i guess yeah  
TG: i guess ill do that when we get back  
TG: thanks  
TG: man its been awhile since we did that over chat instead of like on a couch or in one of your preposterous piles of broken household artifacts  
TG: i actually kind of miss those

CG: WELL  
CG: THAT IS DEFINITELY SOMETHING WE COULD MAKE HAPPENTG: shit youre right

TG: we have the means  
TG: we have the motivation  
TG: but you just gotta take it easier on my threads this time dude i only have like an infinite number of t shirts 

CG: SHIT.  
CG: I SWEAR I WON’T GO ALL AGGRESSIVE CAVETROLL BODICE RIPPER ON YOU AGAIN. 

TG: dude dont get me wrong you can rip my bodice if you want but you have to tell me what were doing  
TG: if its like  
TG: a spades thing  
TG: btw was that what was happening there  
TG: were you uh  
TG: flipping on me 

CG: IF ONLY YOU COULD SEE MY GLITTERING OCULARS AS I WIPE AWAY A TEAR OF PRIDE. AT YOU MANAGING TO TALK ABOUT QUADRANTS WITHOUT TRIPPING OVER YOUR BULGE AND FACEPLANTING INTO A BOG OF PURE IMBECILE.  
CG: BUT NO THAT WASN’T PITCH. I BARELY EVER HAVE PITCH FEELINGS FOR YOU ANYMORE.  
CG: THIS WAS FREAKIER THAN THAT. IT WAS JUST  
CG: THIS IS GOING TO SOUND FUCKED UP, BUT I COULDN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT BLOOD.

TG: blood as in the red stuff  
TG: or i guess rainbow stuff if im trying to be inclusive  
TG: or like  
TG: Blood  
TG: your mystery aspect 

CG: BOTH? NEITHER?  
CG: FUCK I HAVE NO IDEA.  
CG: IT FELT SO STRANGE I CAN BARELY CONJURE IT UP OR DESCRIBE IT CG: I SHOULD PROBABLY JUST AAAAAHHFJKLAKDFJLFKJJJFF FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK 

TG: dude what the fuck are you okay  
TG: what the fuck 

CG: FUCK

TG: karkat wha  
TG: oh fuck this 

You shove your phone into your back pocket, the launch off your bed hard enough to send it screeching backward. Your shirt is still trailing off you like a cape–bodice is hella ripped. You lose it halfway to the door. Real capes or bust. 

Karkat is folded in on himself, couch pillows kicked to the floor, books tossed across the carpet like the rubble of some natural disaster. He stares unseeingly, mouth sagging open, motionless. Your insides turn to slush from your throat down to your guts. 

Then a full-body shudder ripples through him, and you realize he isn’t staring into thin air. You just didn’t see it at first; it’s too bizarre, and you have seen some heinous levels of bizarre. Karkat’s sleeve is knotted back above his elbow and red lines wind narrowly down his arm to drip off the roadblocks of his knuckles. They spin into lazy spirals, trembling threads that glitter just beneath the light grub, twisting together like strands of DNA, 

You know the alien architecture of his face, the satiny grey spots beneath his ears and the backs of his hands. You know him. This kid you don’t know. He looks savage. He looks like a stranger. His eyes are feral violence, his hair is in his face, clumps of tangled wire, fangs protruding over his lip in an endless snarl.

“Karkat. Shit, Karkat!” You’re pleading. You don’t know what you’re pleading for. 

Karkat jerks, like he’s being assaulted by the air. You see his lips form one quick fuck, before he hits the floor and the blood rains down after him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoops


	5. Chapter 5

turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering gardenGnostic [GG] at 01:32 

TG: alert mayday mayday  
TG: shit what does that even mean  
TG: what day in may and why do we care what traumatic fuckery went down to make it the international symbol of distress  
TG: or was it someone named may who knows  
TG: maybe she was bad fucking news  
TG: come on harley i can do this all day but for once i dont want to 

GG: heheh hey dude

TG: john  
TG: goddamn it i can tell its you even through the lime  
TG: wheres jade why are you on her computer 

GG: i’m on the house computer, hold on

EB: writing in green is so weird  
EB: jade is busy, i think.  
EB: or in her lab which usually equals busy or sleeping.  
EB: or just generally do not disturb.  
EB: to be honest, sometimes i don’t see her for days. It can get pretty quiet around here.  
but it’s not like i’m not used to it  
EB: she did the same thing on the boat for like, three years!  
EB: i would never say it to their faces, but between you and me the denizens were pretty lousy conversationalists

TG: well thats depressing in its own unique and hellish way  
TG: and i def want to hear more about the party times you had with gloomy alt-me and forty salamanders and your grandma  
TG: but right now i really just need someone who has their shit together 

EB: wow  
EB: a little harsh, dude

TG: come on you know thats not what i meant  
TG: please just get jade its about karkat 

EB: oh shit, is he okay?

TG: now he is yeah  
TG: hes sleeping it off  
TG: we kind of discovered one of his aspects abilities by accident  
TG: blood  
TG: like literally blood  
TG: like he can control it 

EB: fuck!  
EB: like in avatar the last airbender?  
EB: can he mind-control control people?

TG: no more like he can shoot his own blood out like i dont even know what  
TG: a fucking blood gun  
TG: blood geyser  
TG: blood obligatory jizz joke 

EB: can he make a blood sword?  
EB: because that would be gross but also awesome.

TG: right now he can mostly just ruin the carpet and knock himself unconscious  
TG: and hes done both those things before without powers so  
TG: yeah it would be cool if he could learn to control it but for what  
TG: hunting or like sports or whatever  
TG: we arent in the game anymore knight powers are basically irrelevant  
TG: plus karkat is a little weird about his blood color i doubt hed want to use it where anyone could see 

EB: hey, i think i hear jade!

GG: dave!

TG: sup 

GG: sorry, roxy and i were working on the sopor  
GG: that requires some finesse and protective coverings  
GG: and decontamination showers

TG: whoa okay shower with my mom all you want but i dont want to hear about it 

GG: ;) are you sure?

TG: um  
TG: lets leave that aside i got another issue to bring before the board  
TG: not that we have a board  
TG: maybe we should have one or at least a comment box 

GG: john said something about karkat’s blood powers manifesting physically?

TG: basically yeah  
TG: wait what do you mean physically  
TG: as opposed to what  
TG: like mentally or something 

GG: sort of!  
GG: or i guess more  
GG: ...spiritually?

TG: what 

GG: his ancestor fought for hemo-equality, right?  
GG: he was an activist?

TG: more like a prophet  
TG: the signless  
TG: troll jesus  
TG: and not the douche in the red sweater i mean his actual ancestor from his iteration of reality  
TG: god how fucked up are our lives that we have to talk about iterations of reality 

GG: right, exactly!  
GG: and john told me that vriska once said she thought karkat was almost too good at getting their session’s players to work together

TG: so youre saying blood as in like blood bonds or blood brothers or something  
TG: i never really thought about it like that  
TG: i guess he is pretty good at getting people motivated if only just to make him shut up for half a second  
TG: like a border collie with high blood pressure  
TG: and yeah hes obnoxious but i dont think i can think of anyone who actually dislikes him  
TG: the guy could make friends with a block of cement if it wanted dating advice  
TG: and i know that snake only lit the forge because kanaya promised to ‘protect the knight’ or whatever  
TG: like it thought he was meant for something  
TG: and i guess honestly he did finish his ancestors work  
TG: the hemospectrum doesnt exist anymore  
TG: equality with a side order of fries and genocide  
TG: pretty damn depressing when you think about it 

GG: yeah : /

TG: the blood thing was probably just waiting to happen TG: lets be real 

GG: pretty typical for our lives i guess

TG: our lives harley our goddamn lives  
TG: jerry springer could have a lovechild with that show about people who hoard tuna cans or like eat their own hair  
TG: and it still would have nothing on us  
TG: i mean youre an omnipotent half dog and im a time traveler dating an alien  
TG: so whats a quart or two of your main bros blood painting the walls every so often 

GG: you’re dating calliope?

TG: what  
TG: oh  
TG: well fuck  
TG: as usual i come across as smooth as a dick on sandpaper 

GG: :|

TG: and uh  
TG: jade you know there are actually three possible aliens in this hypothetical dating scenario  
TG: though im pretty sure kanaya doesn’t ride the dude train and if i got anywhere near her rose would make sure i had nothing left to ride anyway  
TG: and im pretty sure calliope and roxy are a thing and your are absolutely fucking with me arent you 

GG: yes i fucking am : P  
GG: of course i know you’re talking about karkat, silly!  
GG: it would take a pretty thick idiot not to pick up on it, honestly

TG: john has no idea does he 

GG: nope!  
GG: he has mentioned that you guys seem “totally gay”  
GG: but he followed it up with ‘lol jk’

TG: classic 

GG: beyond that he has not really talked about either of you very much  
GG: honestly dave...i’m a little worried about him  
GG: we live in the same house but i barely see him

TG: full disclosure he told me the same thing about you he says you never leave your lab 

GG: what! that’s ridiculous  
GG: we both have some introvert tendencies but sometimes he doesnt even show up for meals!  
GG: he never wants to talk about any of the things we used to talk about  
GG: and he can be a pretty moody jerk  
GG: he definitely isnt the john i remember

TG: well yeah of course not  
TG: he isnt 

GG: uggghh i know that  
GG: i missed so much in my timeline!  
GG: he got to spend three years with me that i never got to spend with him  
GG: my john died when we were barely 14!

TG: right but you hear what youre saying right  
TG: dont you think its a little unfair for you to expect him to act like that fourteen year old kid  
TG: dont get me wrong you got the short end of the timeline stick you absolutely did  
TG: you lost all that time but john lost something too right  
TG: he lost you 

GG: god im right here!  
GG: i am really starting to understand how davesprite felt when people treated him like a substitute dave!  
GG: it feels  
GG: really fucking bad!

TG: i get that 

GG: really?

TG: okay i dont understand that specific feel im sure it just upright blows  
TG: but look john spent three years building a relationship with you  
TG: in your timeline he spent it dead  
TG: but in his he probably just did typical john shit  
TG: watched garbage movies and had histrionics about cake and idk got swole  
TG: cut the dude a break is all im saying 

TG: shit  
TG: sorry i shouldnt have just gone off at you like that  
TG: obviously i have no idea what youre dealing with  
TG: so  
TG: sorry 

GG: no, youre right  
GG: that was actually incredibly insightful

TG: seriously nobody could spend two sweeps with karkat and not be like  
TG: olympian with feelings jams  
TG: we did this shit literally all the time  
TG: feelings triathlon i can throw feelings like a goddam discus  
TG: are there discuses in triathlons  
TG: disci  
TG: and while were on the subject what the fuck is a discus anyway 

GG: hee  
GG: i’m really glad you guys got to know each other  
GG: you were a litttle bit uptight before

TG: a little  
TG: please my ass was tighter than a ship in a bottle  
TG: i just needed someone to  
TG: come along and loosen  
TG: you know what  
TG: lets derail this innuendo train before it reaches grand awkward station 

GG: done!  
GG: sorry for going on about my brother-friend problems  
GG: this was supposed to be about you

TG: no its cool i really just needed to rant  
TG: air out some what the fuck  
TG: i mean itll be fine  
TG: right  
TG: it wasn’t anything  
TG: it wasnt heroic or just it wasnt anything it was just stupid 

GG: dave...heroic or just, why…  
GG: ...he’s not unconscious is he

TG: hes god tier jade  
TG: he can fly and fling his blood around like a goddamn anime villain hes god tier 

GG: yes, yes he is!  
GG: he’ll be fine!

TG: yeah  
TG: i should just  
TG: yeah  
TG: its been awhile i should probs be there when he wakes up the first time was kind of rough  
TG: at least for me 

GG: yeah :(

 

\---

**Karkat: Rise**

You resurface like a drowning fish. If a fish could drown. 

Surprise! Turns out dying sucks and coming back feels nothing like waking up. Even your most flailing, nightmare-hounded naps on the meteor never ended like this. _This_ is your pan dragged across broken glass, your body tossed against a brick wall, reality chewing you up and hacking you back out like a glob of stringy phlegm. The world is a streaky mess of colors and lights and sounds--sounds shouldn’t be able to be streaky, but these are. Gulping in air doesn’t seem to help and you are positive that when you look in the mirror it will be to the glazed blankess of a ghost’s eyes. 

“Karkat, calm down. Dude!” A hand clamps across your mouth. It shoots your panic up to critical, but the taste of his skin is familiar. 

“Dave,” you hiss when he releases you. Your voice sounds like you’ve been polishing your shout tunnel with gravel. The colors finally resolve--red and white, whiter than usual. When Dave blanches he goes a creamy paste color. His mouth is pink and swollen; he’s been chewing on his lips. You categorize the details, one after the other, a husktop running diagnostics after a hard shutdown. Sharp cheekbones, little dusting of speckles, a round, dark mark under his left eye. 

“Shit.” Your arms are around each other; you aren’t actually sure who grabbed who. Doesn’t matter. You want to bury yourself in his scent and never leave. You want to live inside his skin. 

...Okay, well, that’s a fucking creepy thought, but you’ll let it slide. Apparently, this is what it takes for you to cut yourself a break. Cut yourself. Ha. Hahahaa.

“Welcome to god tier, dude,” Dave says, all muffled against your hair. “Flying, dying, and inappropriately overpowered levels of gore. Buy two, get one free.” His voice is full of holes. 

The soft thing covering you isn’t a blanket, you realize. It’s Dave’s cape. Your pusher does an embarrassing little squirm. Or maybe it’s just getting its shit back together after not beating for awhile. “Am I naked?” 

“Your shit’s in the wash, but I think it might be time to send that particular turtleneck to Valhalla. Put it in a canoe and light that shit up.” Dave slides down until he’s no longer faceplanted in your hair, resting his head on your thorax instead. His hands flex and unflex; he’s shaking. “We’ll alcehmize you a whole new wardrobe of terrible burgundy pajamas. We’ll make Kanaya a black...whateverthefuck a Sylph wears. Sounds like it’s probably lacy. Shit.” A single fat tear squeezes out of his eye, so quick and unexpected that it’s halfway down his face before either of you notice it. “Shit!” He sits up and drives his palms against his eyes, sharp, shivering little motions. 

“Dave--.” 

“I’m fine, quit it,” he snaps, although you aren’t doing anything. He’s looking at the bedspread so he doesn’t have to look at you, but at least he hasn’t put the shades back on. 

You give him a second. You keep it for yourself and use it to try to stop the world from spinning in circles, remembering the fever you had a couple perigrees into the Journey Through the Void. That was back before you and Dave did anything besides snipe and eye-fuck each other covertly. Or not so covertly, if you ask any of the girls. You’d woken up with him flicking water at your face, little stings that invaded your dreams as swarms of buzzbugs. 

“Fuck off, shit-flap,” you’d snapped, though it had come out more, “ _Fkkshilp_.” 

Turned out he’d brought you soup. It had been, even though you’d never admit it, pretty good. 

Back then he’d just stood around like an awkward lump of human meatsack and watched you eat. Now there’s no soup but there’s the warm, familiar weight against your side, the mere fact of its presence almost as good as the sensation. Your body knows someone else’s scent well enough to trust it. 

Past Karkat would never buy it. Past Karkat would call you a delusional piece of shit and probably ban you from the memo. Past you never expected to have a matesprit at eight sweeps. 

Past you just expected to be dead. 

You stir your fingers through Dave’s hair. At first you had been worried about his fragile fuckng flower skin, but he likes your claws, likes when you scratch the back of his neck, likes when you run them across his thoratic struts or down his spine. 

He shivers. “Fuck.” 

You spread your fingers, scratching beneath his ears with your thumb and forefinger. The shiver revs up and he grabs at your arm convulsively. “Fuck.” His voice catches low in his throat, the human excuse for a purr, _yes, good, more of that_. 

“Hold up.” Dave rolls his shoulders, shrugging you off. “I get that being dead makes you horny, I respect it. We’ve all been there.” 

You snort up at the ceiling. 

“But first maybe tell me what the fresh flying fuck happened back there?” His hair is sticking up in the back and the shirt he’s replaced the one you tore up with doesn’t fit him very well. The sleeves don’t reach his wrists. 

Your shoulders lurch up in a shrug hard enough to rattle your whole body. “Fucked if I know! I may be famous for my arbitrary and hilariously poorly-timed game shenanigans, but that doesn’t mean I know what I’m doing. I was just--.” You flip your arm over, tipping the smooth grey of your wrist toward the lightgrub. “--Thinking about my aspect, and then there was this pressure--.” You screw your eyes shut, trying to conjure the feeling. 

“Jesus, dude, don’t do it again!” Dave grabs your wrist, presses his soft fingertips into the junction of your veins. “One trip to the goddamn blood planetarium is enough.” 

He’s looking at you like you’re a jar that might break, or a sandcastle about to be swept away by the tide. Your pusher throbs, pushing a queasy pulse of heat through you. “I won’t, jackass. Calm down.” 

You don’t feel the way you did before. You don’t think you’ve ever felt that way before. That particular mingling of frustration and curiosity, blurry affection and reluctant hope. Something opened inside you--you were a safe and that particular cascade of emotion had been a combination, the triggering of a chemical change. You had suddenly known you could do it, so you did. 

Or maybe not. Who knows. 

“I don’t even know what it is?” Beyond the queasy pulse of panic at the crimson, the still-ingrained need to hide, to conceal your mutation, nothing had happened. “God, I hope I can only do it to myself.” 

“Maybe we should just stay here.” Dave’s voice pools in the hollow of your throat, his breath warm. It takes a second to penetrate your pan. 

“Wait, what?” You push his bangs back from his forehead to try to get a look at his face. “Are you serious?” 

“No.” Dave is still looking at your collarbone instead of your face. “Yes.” He has a lot of trouble with eye contact; it’s one of the things you’ve piled about. “Fuck, I don’t know. It would be hells of irresponsible and avoidant and probably met with unanimous contempt, but i feel like I actually know what’s going on here. It’s, like, actually safe.” 

Like the universe is putting up its middle finger, you hear a noise from just outside the block. The soft skitter-swish of nubs and clothing, someone trying their best to be silent and not quite managing it. Not an unusual sound, unless you’re in an empty lab on a fallen meteor in the middle of a forest. 

With a spike of cold panic you brace for the distant bray of a honk horn. It doesn’t come. He’s dead. 

He’s dead. So many of them are dead. 

Dave catches your arm as you sway on your way up, both of you moving at the same time. The block goes streaky-slick for a moment, then settles. “You good?” 

“Fine.” You dig brusquely through your sylladex and come up with the only outfit you have capchalogued--pajama pants and one of Dave’s old shirts. White with his sigil on the front, the ancient human recording device that Rose had told you was called a ‘music frisbee’. 

You walk, he hovers. Typical. If you tried to fly right now you’d probably die again. 

Dave’s fingers flex, his arms rising just the smallest bit at the shoulders. Can he use his timetables in the new universe? You’ve never had a reason to find out. He gets to the door first and leans out. 

“Yo, did you leave that open?” 

“What?” The corridor outside is a fractured zig-zag of shadow, the light of Dave’s block stretching out to meet the light of another open door. No one uses that room. Used. “You think I was leaving doors open while I was dead?” 

“You say that like that isn’t the exact shit that happens to us literally all the time.” 

You grind out a frustrated growl. “No, Dave, I did not ghost-walk my dream phantom down the hallway and then open a fucking door.” 

The door swings open a couple more inches. You both jump, and Dave gives you his most eloquent _what-the-fuck_ eyebrows. You start up the corridor, trying not to feel like the rustblood in the horror flick--the one who thinks the intruder in her hive is her moirail and not a crazed subjuggulator with a rusty butter knife. At least you’d put clothes on. 

You can’t even remember the last time you went in this room, or what’s in it. Maybe some broken shit, alchemical experiments that never should have happened. 

That’s not what’s in here now. 

Scattered leaves of torn up books, a molding monument of dirty nutrition platforms, what might be the innards of a husktop piled in one corner. The only furniture is a table keeling drunkenly sideways on a broken leg. 

“Shit, what is this, someone’s tantrum room?” Dave wrinkles his nose at the dirty dishes. “That shit is stone cold unsanitary.” His eyes are tight and half-shut. You realize this is the only time you’ve ever seen him in strife mode without his shades on. 

“No, this--.” 

The room is a shit pile, no doubt, but the real disaster is the walls. They are covered in splotches of paint, spidery strings of nonsense words, Alternian, some English, some other stuff you don’t recognize at all. Wavy lines, claw prints, terrified faces. And beneath all of it, a continuous motif of intersecting lines, interspersed with the four symbols every troll in the universe would know anywhere. 

You cross the room unsteadily and touch a lopsided diamond. The paint flakes off beneath your clawtips, a rusty green. Your gastric sack flips over and curls into a knot. You are looking at the most fucked up shipping grid of your career. 

“Nepeta,” Dave says, because he knows the names of all your friends, even the ones he never got to meet. He says her name so you don’t have to. Your shout tunnel is sticking to itself. Some of the pictures--not all of them--are in that same rusty green. Olive green. 

“This isn’t.” Your voice floats out of you, hovering somewhere at the ceiling. “This wasn’t her room, this isn’t--who _did_ this?” 

“Don’t know.” Dave is revolving slowly on the spot, hand outstretched like he’s searching for something to grab onto. “I don’t even know what this is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i promise next chapter y'all get an explanation; thanks for being patient with my incoherent ass story

**Author's Note:**

> quadrantconfusion on tumblr!


End file.
